I was discussing Java Exceptions vs. Lisp conditions with a colleague
recently, and he agreed that Lisp's conditions have several points in
their favour. He did raise one point though, that I didn't know the
answer to.
In Java you may specify, as part of a method's signature, the classes of
Exception that it might throw. I had to admit that I knew of no facility
for declaring the conditions that might be signalled by a Lisp method or
function. Is there such a mechanism? If not, are there good reasons why
it would be an unnecessary or undesirable feature?
Thanks,
Bill.
In article <······························@abstractnonsense.com>,
William Bland <·······@abstractnonsense.com> wrote:
> I was discussing Java Exceptions vs. Lisp conditions with a colleague
> recently, and he agreed that Lisp's conditions have several points in
> their favour. He did raise one point though, that I didn't know the
> answer to.
>
> In Java you may specify, as part of a method's signature, the classes of
> Exception that it might throw. I had to admit that I knew of no facility
> for declaring the conditions that might be signalled by a Lisp method or
> function. Is there such a mechanism? If not, are there good reasons why
> it would be an unnecessary or undesirable feature?
It doesn't exist in Lisp. In languages with static typing, exception
declarations allow the compiler to warn if you don't establish handlers
for all the possible conditions that may be thrown. But since Lisp
isn't statically typed, declarations like these don't really fit.
--
Barry Margolin, ······@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
On 2005-04-13, William Bland <·······@abstractnonsense.com> wrote:
> In Java you may specify, as part of a method's signature, the classes of
> Exception that it might throw. I had to admit that I knew of no facility
> for declaring the conditions that might be signalled by a Lisp method or
> function. Is there such a mechanism? If not, are there good reasons why
> it would be an unnecessary or undesirable feature?
>
> Thanks,
> Bill.
For the same reason one doesn't have to declare return values in lisp:
lisp is completely dynamic. It is just not necessary, because there is
no type-checking at compile time.
--
-Dave Watson
········@docwatson.org
William Bland wrote:
> I was discussing Java Exceptions vs. Lisp conditions with a colleague
> recently, and he agreed that Lisp's conditions have several points in
> their favour. He did raise one point though, that I didn't know the
> answer to.
>
> In Java you may specify, as part of a method's signature, the classes of
> Exception that it might throw. I had to admit that I knew of no facility
> for declaring the conditions that might be signalled by a Lisp method or
> function. Is there such a mechanism? If not, are there good reasons why
> it would be an unnecessary or undesirable feature?
Others have explained why it is inappropriate for Lisp, so let me take a
crack at undesirable. Why do I have to specify the conditions my code
may spawn? And change it when I change what the function actually
throws? Where did this housekeeping burden come from? Oh! Some genius
thinks the compiler can make my code Correct, if only I spend half my
time jumping thru compiler hoops.
The compiler can never guarantee my code is correct, so wasting time
jumping thru its hoops is undesirable.
This, as others did suggest, is just another sampling from the static vs
dynamic trade-off, long ago decided in favor of dynamic.
kenny
--
Cells? Cello? Cells-Gtk?: http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
"Doctor, I wrestled with reality for forty years, and I am happy to
state that I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Kenny Tilton wrote:
> The compiler can never guarantee my code is correct, so wasting time
> jumping thru its hoops is undesirable.
Quite true in general, but sometimes it might remind you that you
forgot to catch that new exception you added to some code. From
Bruce Eckel's weblog (IIRC) I gathered that in dynamic languages
these errors are uncovered by good testing instead.
> This, as others did suggest, is just another sampling from the static vs
> dynamic trade-off, long ago decided in favor of dynamic.
It depends. I like static checking *a lot*, but the flexibility
and extensibility of Lisp seems nicer than the rigor of SML, so
you're probably right. Adding static rules for every new macro
might indeed be a PITA; sometime (like in 10 years) I might
experiment with some static checking... First I gotta get that
PCL book and walk the Lisp way; should arrive any day now!
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> Kenny Tilton wrote:
>> The compiler can never guarantee my code is correct, so wasting time
>> jumping thru its hoops is undesirable.
>
> Quite true in general, but sometimes it might remind you that you
> forgot to catch that new exception you added to some code. From Bruce
> Eckel's weblog (IIRC) I gathered that in dynamic languages these
> errors are uncovered by good testing instead.
And in Lisp, the absence of an explicit handler is not necessarily a
problem, for several reasons.
Firstly, not all conditions are errors, or even serious conditions:
warnings, storage-conditions, compiler notes, and the like quite
naturally don't always get handled.
Secondly, even in the case of serious conditions, it isn't necessary
to handle them all, particularly during development: unlike
environments where an unhandled exception leads to abrupt termination
of everything, in Lisp you end up in a debugger, with
implementation-defined but generally useful attributes -- often
including the ability to treat the condition as though it had been
handled, and continue computing from certain recovery points (such as
the start and end of the current frame) as well as being able to
choose restarts interactively.
Christophe
Christophe Rhodes <·····@cam.ac.uk> writes:
> Firstly, not all conditions are errors, or even serious conditions:
> warnings, storage-conditions, compiler notes, and the like quite
> naturally don't always get handled.
>
> Secondly, even in the case of serious conditions, it isn't necessary
> to handle them all, particularly during development: unlike
> environments where an unhandled exception leads to abrupt termination
> of everything, in Lisp you end up in a debugger, with
> implementation-defined but generally useful attributes -- often
> including the ability to treat the condition as though it had been
> handled, and continue computing from certain recovery points (such as
> the start and end of the current frame) as well as being able to
> choose restarts interactively.
And to beat this horse a little more, "the debugger" is a program. By
default it probably prompts the user for input, but on a server
running in production mode, it more likely writes some info to a log
file and gets back to the server's toplevel.
Kenny Tilton wrote:
> William Bland wrote:
>
>> I was discussing Java Exceptions vs. Lisp conditions with a colleague
>> recently, and he agreed that Lisp's conditions have several points in
>> their favour. He did raise one point though, that I didn't know the
>> answer to.
>>
>> In Java you may specify, as part of a method's signature, the classes of
>> Exception that it might throw. I had to admit that I knew of no facility
>> for declaring the conditions that might be signalled by a Lisp method or
>> function. Is there such a mechanism? If not, are there good reasons why
>> it would be an unnecessary or undesirable feature?
>
> Others have explained why it is inappropriate for Lisp, so let me take a
> crack at undesirable. Why do I have to specify the conditions my code
> may spawn? And change it when I change what the function actually
> throws? Where did this housekeeping burden come from? Oh! Some genius
> thinks the compiler can make my code Correct, if only I spend half my
> time jumping thru compiler hoops.
>
> The compiler can never guarantee my code is correct, so wasting time
> jumping thru its hoops is undesirable.
>
> This, as others did suggest, is just another sampling from the static vs
> dynamic trade-off, long ago decided in favor of dynamic.
;)
Static checking can lead to more errors instead of less. How often do
Java programmers write this:
try {
...
} catch (Exception e) {
// deal with this later
}
This is especially bad because the unchecked RuntimeException class is a
subclass of Exception, so now you catch everything, including
NullPointerException and DivisionByZeroException etc., and they all are
just brushed under the carpet. This makes testing your code very hard.
Similar examples can be found for other kinds of static checking,
including static type checks.
(And in order to prevent flames, there are of course better static type
systems than that of Java... ;)
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:24:56 +0200, Pascal Costanza wrote:
>
> Static checking can lead to more errors instead of less. How often do
> Java programmers write this:
>
> try {
> ...
> } catch (Exception e) {
> // deal with this later
> }
>
I've actually seen people do worse than this - they've caught Throwable,
which means masking even things like OutOfMemoryError!
Thanks for all the replies - I hadn't been thinking of this issue as part
of the static vs. dynamic thing before, but now I can see that it really
is.
Best wishes,
Bill.
William Bland wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:24:56 +0200, Pascal Costanza wrote:
>
>>Static checking can lead to more errors instead of less. How often do
>>Java programmers write this:
>>
>>try {
>> ...
>>} catch (Exception e) {
>> // deal with this later
>>}
>>
>
> I've actually seen people do worse than this - they've caught Throwable,
> which means masking even things like OutOfMemoryError!
>
> Thanks for all the replies - I hadn't been thinking of this issue as part
> of the static vs. dynamic thing before, but now I can see that it really
> is.
To be very clear here, the specific problem that RuntimeExceptions are
caught here is caused by RuntimeException being a subclass of Exception
and could have been fixed by doing it the other way around. (But that's
only a fix for this particular issue.)
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
Kenny Tilton a �crit :
[...]
> Where did this housekeeping burden come from?
From the CLU language I believe (Lyskov and Snyder).
Aur�lien.
From: Brian Downing
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <Uk37e.11629$Bb3.2330@attbi_s22>
In article <······························@abstractnonsense.com>,
William Bland <·······@abstractnonsense.com> wrote:
> In Java you may specify, as part of a method's signature, the classes of
> Exception that it might throw. I had to admit that I knew of no facility
> for declaring the conditions that might be signalled by a Lisp method or
> function. Is there such a mechanism? If not, are there good reasons why
> it would be an unnecessary or undesirable feature?
Another point not yet raised is that one could, if one wanted[1], write
a PEDANTIC-DEFUN that scanned its body for handlers and calls to other
PEDANTIC-DEFUN'd functions, and did the same "exception safety"
computations as Java does.
This, of course, requires that you DEFUN things in order and not change
them dynamically to throw more or less exceptions.
[1] You don't want to, though.
-bcd
--
*** Brian Downing <bdowning at lavos dot net>
From: Stefan Nobis
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87r7hft8sa.fsf@snobis.de>
William Bland <·······@abstractnonsense.com> writes:
> In Java you may specify, as part of a method's signature, the
> classes of Exception that it might throw.
Let me add why this is undesirable in Java, too: It clutters code
very much. Often you write code deep in a library that may throw
an exception, but handling the exception gracefully is only
possible at near toplevel. So in Java you have to pass this
exception by hand through all of the call chain! That's a burden,
not a gift.
Other static typed languages like C++ don't do this. In C++ it is
*possible* to declare which exception a function may throw, but it
is not neccessary to catch/declare them in all calling functions,
so you don't have to propagate the exception manually.
Java has nice typechecking and much of that is really helpful not
only to beginners. But i think the explicit declaration *and* the
rule to catch or declare every execption that a called function
may throw, is really braindead.
--
Stefan.
I remember Bruce Eckels suggesting throwing RuntimeExceptions because
they don't need to be specified on the signatures.
Stefan Nobis wrote:
<snip>
>
> Let me add why this is undesirable in Java, too: It clutters code
> very much. Often you write code deep in a library that may throw
> an exception, but handling the exception gracefully is only
> possible at near toplevel. So in Java you have to pass this
> exception by hand through all of the call chain! That's a burden,
> not a gift.
>
On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 09:08:02 -0400, Thomas Gagne
<······@wide-open-west.com> wrote:
>I remember Bruce Eckels suggesting throwing RuntimeExceptions because
>they don't need to be specified on the signatures.
Java's whole exception system is problematic. As far as I know, the
theory is that "checked" exceptions are those that the user should
always handle, whereas "unchecked" exceptions (RuntimeExceptions) are
for exceptions that cannot be profitably handled, e.g.,
NullPointerException. In practice, however, this involves the library
writer deciding what the library user can handle -- which is
impossible. Hence, SQLException is "checked", but many applications
simply wrap it in a RuntimeException and throw it upwards, since they
have no way to deal gracefully with database failures.
On top of that, the whole scheme interacts poorly with frameworks such
as Servlets. A servlet cannot throw arbitrary checked exceptions, so
any such exception that is not handled must be wrapped in another
exception and thrown upward. Etc.
In general, I regard checked exceptions as an experiment that failed.
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
> In Java you may specify, as part of a method's signature, the classes of
> Exception that it might throw. I had to admit that I knew of no facility
> for declaring the conditions that might be signalled by a Lisp method or
> function. Is there such a mechanism? If not, are there good reasons why
> it would be an unnecessary or undesirable feature?
I consider this a misfeature of Java. Consider that you have written an application,
and want to add a feature by integrating an existing library. A function in this
library reads a configuration file, and since this file might not exist, it throws
IOException. This must either be catched at the call place, or the calling code
must also change the signature to throw the same exception. If you do that you will
get a cascading effect, since all functions calling this function must handle the
exception or change the signature. Now you have a nasty cascading effect, and the
result is that you often see that exceptions are silently ignored in java code.
This does of cause defeat the purpose of having exceptions in the first place,
but you cannot easily change the whole static callgraph above the function in a
several 100.000 lines program.
If this file is missing, the appropirate place to handle may be by asking the user,
but the static declaration of exceptions in java makes that difficult if you did
not think of at designtime, and makes it harder to change big programs.
In an earlier job, we soleved this by introducing CompanyNameException, that wraped
the original exception, so we could resolve it at an appropirate level
without changing the function signatures in the code, but this is really to
circumvent the feature.
--
Gisle Sælensminde, Phd student, Scientific programmer
Computational biology unit, University of Bergen, Norway
Email: ·····@cbu.uib.no | Complicated is easy, simple is hard.
From: Antonio Menezes Leitao
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87br8ipg7q.fsf@gia.ist.utl.pt>
···@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
> ·····@kaktus.ii.uib.no writes:
>>A function in this library reads a configuration file, and
>>since this file might not exist, it throws IOException. This
>>must either be catched at the call place, or the calling code
>>must also change the signature to throw the same exception.
>
> The signatur would only have to be changed for certain kinds
> of exceptions, not for "runtime exceptions". So, if you do not
> want the signature to change, but still want to throw an
> exception, you might rethrow any exception as a runtime
> exception.
>
> For example, I wrote:
>
> static java.io.PrintStream newOutPrint()
> { java.io.PrintStream outPrint = null;
> java.lang.Exception ex = null;
> final java.io.FileDescriptor outDescriptor =
> java.io.FileDescriptor.out;
> try
> { java.io.FileOutputStream outStream =
> new java.io.FileOutputStream( outDescriptor );
> try
> { outPrint = new java.io.PrintStream( outStream, false, "UTF-8" ); }
> catch( java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException e ){ ex = e; }}
> catch( java.lang.SecurityException e ){ ex = e; }
> if( ex != null )throw new java.lang.RuntimeException( ex );
> return outPrint; }
and your code becomes much harder to write and read. Without the
try-catch to transform checked exceptions into unchecked exceptions,
your code is just:
static java.io.PrintStream newOutPrint() {
final java.io.FileDescriptor outDescriptor = java.io.FileDescriptor.out;
java.io.FileOutputStream outStream = new java.io.FileOutputStream( outDescriptor );
return new java.io.PrintStream( outStream, false, "UTF-8" );
}
[Obviously, we can make it even simpler:
static PrintStream newOutPrint() {
return new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream(FileDescriptor.out), false, "UTF-8");
}
]
IMHO, your example is a simple proof that checked exceptions are a bad
idea.
Checked exceptions are so annoying that I decided to include in my
Lisp to Java compiler the automatic inference of checked exceptions.
This means that you can write:
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
(defun read-data ()
(let ((f (new 'file "data.dat")))
(let ((data (new 'data-input-stream (new 'file-input-stream f))))
(unwind-protect
(princ-to-string (read-int data))
(close data)))))
(defun make-alias (name/string)
(in (the java.rmi.naming)
(let ((remote (lookup name)))
(bind (concatenate 'string name "-alias")
remote))))
(defun make-alias-from-file-data ()
(make-alias (read-data)))
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
and it translates it into:
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
public static String readData() throws IOException {
File f = new File("data.dat");
DataInputStream data = new DataInputStream(new FileInputStream(f));
try {
return "" + data.readInt();
} finally {
data.close();
}
}
public static void makeAlias(String name)
throws AlreadyBoundException, RemoteException,
MalformedURLException, NotBoundException {
Remote remote = Naming.lookup(name);
Naming.bind(name + "-alias", remote);
}
public static void makeAliasFromFileData()
throws NotBoundException, AlreadyBoundException, IOException {
makeAlias(readData());
}
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Note that the "function" makeAliasFromFileData doesn't throws
RemoteException (that is thrown by the called "function" makeAlias)
because it already throws its superclass IOException (that is thrown
by the other called "function" readData).
In this way, your code is easier to write (for Lispers) and easier
read (for Java programmers) and the throws clause becomes
documentation :-).
I presume it wouldn't be hard for those clever IDEs such as Eclipse to
automatically do the same. Maybe they already do it.
Ant�nio Leit�o.
Stefan Ram wrote:
> My code is longer than necessary because I have created it
> combining several coding patterns in my brain (similar to what
> your translator might do in a computer).
>
> It would suffice to write (untested):
>
> static PrintStream newOutPrint() { try
> { return new PrintStream
> ( new FileOutputStream( FileDescriptor.out ), false, "UTF-8" ); }
> catch( Exception e ){ throw new RuntimeException( e ); return null; }}
If tested you would discover the addition of the "return null;" would
fail to compile as that code is unreachable.
Jim
Stefan Ram wrote:
> Antonio Menezes Leitao <···@aleph.local> writes:
>
>>···@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>
>>>static java.io.PrintStream newOutPrint()
>>>{ java.io.PrintStream outPrint = null;
>>> java.lang.Exception ex = null;
>>> final java.io.FileDescriptor outDescriptor =
>>> java.io.FileDescriptor.out;
>>> try
>>> { java.io.FileOutputStream outStream =
>>> new java.io.FileOutputStream( outDescriptor );
>>> try
>>> { outPrint = new java.io.PrintStream( outStream, false, "UTF-8" ); }
>>> catch( java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException e ){ ex = e; }}
>>> catch( java.lang.SecurityException e ){ ex = e; }
>>> if( ex != null )throw new java.lang.RuntimeException( ex );
>>> return outPrint; }
>>
>>[Obviously, we can make it even simpler:
>>static PrintStream newOutPrint() {
>> return new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream(FileDescriptor.out), false, "UTF-8");
>>}
>
> My code is longer than necessary because I have created it
> combining several coding patterns in my brain (similar to what
> your translator might do in a computer).
>
> It would suffice to write (untested):
>
> static PrintStream newOutPrint() { try
> { return new PrintStream
> ( new FileOutputStream( FileDescriptor.out ), false, "UTF-8" ); }
> catch( Exception e ){ throw new RuntimeException( e ); return null; }}
We're still not there:
- You don't want to catch RuntimeException and wrap it in another
RuntimeException. That makes other code unnecessarily complex.
- RuntimeException doesn't take another exception as a parameter. Java
has a specific exception class for wrapping checked exceptions.
The full code would be this:
static PrintStream newOutPrint() {
try {
return
new PrintStream(
new FileOutputStream(FileDescriptor.out), false, "UTF-8");
} catch (RuntimeException e) {
throw e;
} catch (Exception e) {
throw new UndeclaredThrowableException(e);
}
}
...and there's no macro facility to wrap this nonsense.
Another funny exception class in Java is the
UnsupportedOperationException. If you are required to implement a method
because of a declaration in an interface or an abstract superclass, but
really cannot or don't want to, the correct way to implement a stub for
it is this:
public int dontCareYet(...) {
throw new UnsupportedOperationException("dontCareYet");
}
Other alternatives, like returning a default value (0?), or simply doing
nothing in the case of void methods are incorrect and/or don't behave
well in test suites. The throw of an "unsupported operation exception"
is what dynamically typed languages do by default, though...
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
Stefan Ram wrote:
> Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> writes:
>
>>RuntimeException doesn't take another exception as a parameter.
>
>
> Using this specific class might be better style, but
> I regard the following constructor of RuntimeException
> as one taking another exception as an argument:
>
> http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/RuntimeException.html#RuntimeException(java.lang.Throwable)
OK, I see. They have added that in JDK 1.4 and I have checked against
the JDK 1.3 docu.
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
Pascal Costanza wrote:
> - You don't want to catch RuntimeException and wrap it in another
> RuntimeException. That makes other code unnecessarily complex.
Agreed, and if catch the type thrown rather than the base type, you
don't get this problem:
public static PrintStream newOutPrint () {
try {
return new PrintStream(
new FileOutputStream(FileDescriptor.out), false, "UTF-8");
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
}
Though in real life I often pass the exception on to a condition handler
class, that would log it or launch a debugger as appropriate. That does
require an extra loop if you want the code to retry the operation:
for(;;) {
try {
return new PrintStream(
new FileOutputStream(FileDescriptor.out), false, "UTF-8");
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
Conditions.handleOrWrap(e);
}
}
Which will retry until it succeeds, or handleOrWrap throws a runtime
exception.
(which gets into another issue with Java and method dispatch, as you do
want to alter the handler behaviour based on the type of the exception
thrown)
> - RuntimeException doesn't take another exception as a parameter.
It does in version >= 1.4, see
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/RuntimeException.html
>Java has a specific exception class for wrapping checked exceptions.
Java has a very specific exception class for wrapping checked exceptions
which have been thrown by reflective invocation via the JVM's proxy
implementation, from methods where the invoked method throws exceptions
that are not handled by the invoking method. Using it here would be
inappropriate, as there are no reflective proxies involved. How you are
expected to wrap exceptions in Java is described in the API documents
for Throwable, see
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/Throwable.html
Pete
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u64yqdnie.fsf@nhplace.com>
William Bland <·······@abstractnonsense.com> writes:
> I was discussing Java Exceptions vs. Lisp conditions with a colleague
> recently, and he agreed that Lisp's conditions have several points in
> their favour. He did raise one point though, that I didn't know the
> answer to.
>
> In Java you may specify, as part of a method's signature, the classes of
> Exception that it might throw. I had to admit that I knew of no facility
> for declaring the conditions that might be signalled by a Lisp method or
> function. Is there such a mechanism? If not, are there good reasons why
> it would be an unnecessary or undesirable feature?
The CL condition system took this from the Lisp Machine condition system.
I've spent my career thinking about, teaching about, and using the condition
system and I absolutely believe that it was the right decision.
Moreover, I have been frequently hampered by the Java model in the
comparatively short time during my career that I've done serious Java
programming.
It introduces a problem into Java that if any caller signals a new kind of
error that its immediate callers do not want to handle, the entire morass
of callers is forced into dealing with it.
Often, as a result, Java programs I've seen have taken to using the I/O
system to pass information that is ripe for condition processing but that
is just too painful to observe. I've sometimes said that if you wanted to
cripple Java utterly, you could continue down the bad path they started down
and insist that they should make 'input/output' part of the type signature,
too, so that you wouldn't be able to escape the obviously intentional yet
agonizingly painful stranglehold of declaration by switching from a condition
to mere typeout.
There is sometimes a place for declaring such things. During standardization
of Common Lisp, I advocated that perhaps we should have had fields in the
definitons of the functions that said not only how they dealt with conditions
but what I/O or consing behavior or even algorithmic complexity each function
must not, might, or must have. It's often useful to users to know these
things WHERE THEY ARE KNOWN and WHERE KNOWING THEM IS A GOOD IDEA. But it's
bad for them to be promised merely as a matter of practice as if exposing
this info was always good, and as if relying on it were always good.
Consider a simple case: I have a function that computes a relatively complex
math or other analysis function. I realize it's got a problem and want to
take it out of service. I know a workaround is to task some oracle available
on the network. Slower, perhaps, because it does network I/O, but good.
Now consider:
(a) Why should I have to recompile my entire system to handle
network unavailable errors?
Bonus points:
(b) Why shouldn't I be able to have handled network unavailable errors
around a program that didn't document it was going to talk to the
net but that conceivably might have to.
Here's another case: Suppose I have limited storage, and so I implement
a database as:
(defun put-data (key value)
(format *desk-output* "~&Please remember the value of ~S is: ~S~%"
key value))
and
(defun get-data (key)
(format *desk-output* "~&What was the last value I gave you for ~S?~%"
key)
(read *desk-input*))
These programs might get I/O errors or other odd problems in what you thought
was a program that did no I/O.
I've picked these because they are very blatant examples, but real examples
are often more subtle. My real point is that you can often tell a lot about
the implementation of something by the exceptions it signals. But, moreover,
you can confine the possible set of implementations by limiting the exceptions.
Going back to the original design decision, the real reason that the
condition system should stand on the side and not be used for dispatch
is that you just don't know which condition handlers might be relevant.
It's very hard in the most complex of programs in an environment based
on dynamic data interchange, not static typing, to assume that you have
full world knowledge. AND, further, it's an illusion to claim that a
static type system can know either.
All you can do by static typing is limit the usefulness of your
program to what knowledge you had at the time you compiled it. Lisp
is designed to be able to, at runtime, allow programs to recognize
data they did not expect and to reason about it. So that means that if
you ever expect to have a new idea and to have your program confront it
after compilation, you'd better be programming in Lisp and not in static
languages because, of necessity, since a static program cannot represent
an idea newer than its design, it can't recognize one either. Every
new round peg either goes in through the square peg opening you wrote
originally or else is rejected as bad data. In a world where programs
must operate 24/7 continually confronting new protocols, data, concepts,
etc., that just isn't sufficient. In short, if new ideas are good ideas,
it follows from what I've said that a static program is provably incapable
of representing, and hence of recognizing, a good idea...
(Now people will follow with discussions of wrappers that allow you to
represent non-data as data of a different, 'foreign' kind that has to
be handled specially. But now you're talking about either 'separate
but equal' or else 'meta-languages without first-class access to the
underlying language'. Lisp, by contrast, offers fluid access back and
forth between its reflective parts and its underlying parts, so that
you can reflect out to the level of probing symbol names, class
structures, etc. or you can call down to reassemble things into
programs and even dynamically compile and use them without leaving the
runtime universe... Expressionally, all that is missing in most static
languages. It's barely there in some ways in Java, but it's irritatingly
painful to access. Java is an "implementational", not an "expressional"
language, to use the partition I often do.)
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> ...
> Often, as a result, Java programs I've seen have taken to using the I/O
> system to pass information that is ripe for condition processing but that
> is just too painful to observe. I've sometimes said that if you wanted to
> cripple Java utterly, you could continue down the bad path they started down
> and insist that they should make 'input/output' part of the type signature,
> too, so that you wouldn't be able to escape the obviously intentional yet
> agonizingly painful stranglehold of declaration by switching from a condition
> to mere typeout.
Actually Java does implement exactly that feature, namely the
SecurityManager. The granularity however is class (or package) rather
than method (also the checking is dynamic rather than static). The
ability to have fine-grained control over what code can do (with the
notable omission of time or space) is one of the best things about Java.
Alas security policies are abused even more than exceptions by the
vast majority of Java coders.
And for those folks sending Java condition info to i/o, I direct their
attention to Apache Log4j.
Jim
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uaco18jkz.fsf@nhplace.com>
Jim <·········@yahoo.com> writes:
> Kent M Pitman wrote:
>
> > ...
> > Often, as a result, Java programs I've seen have taken to using
> > the I/O system to pass information that is ripe for condition
> > processing but that is just too painful to observe. I've
> > sometimes said that if you wanted to cripple Java utterly, you
> > could continue down the bad path they started down and insist that
> > they should make 'input/output' part of the type signature, too,
> > so that you wouldn't be able to escape the obviously intentional
> > yet agonizingly painful stranglehold of declaration by switching
> > from a condition to mere typeout.
>
> Actually Java does implement exactly that feature, namely the
> SecurityManager. The granularity however is class (or package)
> rather than method (also the checking is dynamic rather than
> static). The ability to have fine-grained control over what code
> can do (with the notable omission of time or space) is one of the
> best things about Java.
I don't think anything I said is inconsistent with this statement,
which I largely agree with.
But at the same time, it's one of the reasons I classify Java as a
"good, high-level, assembly-language". It's the kind of 'connective
pipe' I am fine with having underly a good solid system as the
language and platform into which things compile. (I might or might not
choose it personally, mostly depending on the application, but I don't
rule it out.) At the same time, the cost in bookkeeping due to the
type signature thing is so high that it's not the sort of thing I can
bear to recommend to people as a first-line choice of what level to
program directly in. Compilers are good at bookkeeping, so I don't
mind them doing it.
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u1x9edn94.fsf@nhplace.com>
And I meant to add:
The design of the CL declaration facility is about making this subtle
distinction between allowing you to say what you want, rather than
requiring you to say what some person without all appropriate context
thought you ought. I'd not oppose a declaration that said "I expect to
signal these conditions" so that a compiler could mention to the caller
that they hadn't handled them all. But I wouldn't want the compiler to
make the program not work (i.e., either not compile or else sabotage it to
keep it from running) because
(a) the debugger (the interactive error handler) counts as one of
the handlers and the interactive user might know what to do
(b) there might be later code loaded that wraps still more handlers
around, not known at the time of compilation
(c) the program might be getting used in a way that doesn't lead to
the signaling of those errors
(d) independent compilation of modules might mean that either part of
the program could get changed to fix the problem--it's a shared
problem, not a problem in the caller or the callee.
I suspect there are other reasons as well. These are just the ones that
come easily to mind.
William Bland wrote:
> I was discussing Java Exceptions vs. Lisp conditions with a colleague
> recently, and he agreed that Lisp's conditions have several points in
> their favour. He did raise one point though, that I didn't know the
> answer to.
>
> In Java you may specify, as part of a method's signature, the classes
of
> Exception that it might throw. I had to admit that I knew of no
facility
> for declaring the conditions that might be signalled by a Lisp method
or
> function.
That's because Lisp avoids the silly design of conditions being
signaled by a function. Conditions are signaled by invoking the API
that signals them, and are not bound to any function.
When a condition is signaled, that does not initiate unwinding. The
block in which the signaling is invoked does not terminate! So nothing
destructive is going on which requires containment. Merely, the dynamic
environment is being searched for a handler. But that handler is
invoked as a function.
Lisp condition handling is a lot more like machine-language exception
handling. When a machine encounters an exception such as an illegal
instruction opcode, division by zero or page fault, does unwinding
happen? Heck no. Rather than information being thrown away, information
about the CPU state is stacked! And then a handler is invoked as a
chained function call through the exception or interrupt vector table.
The interrupt handler can in fact cause the original code to be
restarted.
> Is there such a mechanism? If not, are there good reasons why
> it would be an unnecessary or undesirable feature?
Yes. The same reasons why you don't declare the return type of a
function, or the types of its parameters and so on. It's because Lisp
is a run-time-typed dynamic language, whose programs can be extended at
run-time with new code and data types.
Declaring what may or may not be thrown is basically an idiot's way of
dealing with his emotions of mistrust against advanced error handling.
It expresses a longing to go back to return-value-based error handling,
where you know exactly what happens because every function in a chall
chain is responsible for computing its error-indication, which follows
a hard-coded vocabulary of codes. It's basically a way of ``selling''
exception handling to crusty old programmers who have used return
values all their lives, and want exception handling to just be a
syntactic sugar for the same designs they are used to.
When you require another programmer to declare all of the error
conditions that may be returned by a function, you are essentially
saying: exception handling is nice within any given subsystem, just
don't throw anything unexpected my way across the interface boundary.
Let's agree on all possible conditions in your code today, and then
when any layers below you create unexpected problems in the future,
that is entirely your problem. You must obey the original interface
contract with respect to me, and ensure that you compensate for any new
misbehavior of the lower layers in your own domain, so that I don't see
any problem in mine!
In other words, when you see a function like this:
void foo () throws (X, Y, Z) { ... }
it might as well be written like this:
// returns fixed vocabulary of error codes
int foo () { ... }
so that you can then write:
// Let's have exception handling *within* our module, for
convenience
switch (foo()) {
case ERROR_X: throw X();
case ERROR_Y: throw Y();
case ERROR_Z: throw Z();
default: throw OopsieLowerLayerMisbehavior();
}
Since foo() is responsible for handling all errors going through it and
ensuring that only X, Y and Z can come out, it can just as easily
indicate errors with return values, except for the additional piece of
labor that the caller has to go through to write the switch statement
to convert the values to exceptions.
This is exactly what you would do if foo() is some kind of low level
RPC going between process or machine boundaries, where exceptions are
not supported directly, only arguments and returns that are simple data
types.
But main advantage of a condition system is that intermediate functions
in a calling chain do not have to be aware of what errors pass through
them! YOu can create protocols between distant layers of code without
the involvement of any incidental intermediate layers.
If I'm using MAPCAR, and the function that is processing the list
elements raises a condition, I want that to pass transparently through
MAPCAR. I can't recompile MAPCAR to give it permission to pass through
my newly defined condition types.
You can extend an existing system with some new piece of low-level
code, and some new piece of high level code, which handle errors
between each other thorugh the intermediate plumbing --- plumbing that
you don't even have to recompile!
Sorry to resurrect a somewhat stale thread, but I came across this which
happens to be pertinent to the problem I am currently experiencing.
> When you require another programmer to declare all of the error
> conditions that may be returned by a function, you are essentially
> saying: exception handling is nice within any given subsystem, just
> don't throw anything unexpected my way across the interface boundary.
> Let's agree on all possible conditions in your code today, and then
> when any layers below you create unexpected problems in the future,
> that is entirely your problem. You must obey the original interface
> contract with respect to me, and ensure that you compensate for any new
> misbehavior of the lower layers in your own domain, so that I don't see
> any problem in mine!
While I am in no way advocating checked exceptions, I do find the above
stance somewhat puzzeling; at least if I am interpreting this correctly.
I have written a lot of Java code, and is therefore used to the way exceptions
are used and documented in the Java world. But am always on the lookup for new
interesting languages to learn. Along the way I fell in love with
Smalltalk, which in turn led me (through discussions on comp.lang.smalltalk)
to both Lisp and Ruby. By far, I am the most excuited about Lisp, and
I have been intending to start writing some 'significant' applications
in Lisp for some time. I find Lisp light years head of Java in terms of
general flexibility and attractiveness.
But 'significant' means real practical stuff. And in real applications,
error handling is very important. A networking server must be able to deal
with sockets errors without terminating; a mail user agent must be able
to differentiate between expected real-life problems (i.e., networking
issues) and internal bugs. Unfortunately, I have personally found the
error handling situation lacking in Lisp (aswell as Ruby and Smalltalk). It
is not that the condition system in and of itself has a problem; it is rather
how it is used and documented.
Specifically, the problem is that the conditions signaled by a function is
almost never documented! I am not talking about every single possible problem
that might occurr as a result of internal library bugs or bugs in calling
code. But the *EXPECTED* conditions that *ARE* going to happen in real life.
In this regard, I must say that I find Java exemplary. Given a function that
operates on a stream, or a file, or any kind of external resource, there is
documentation as to how these error conditions are handled (be it by returning
some special value or by throwing an exception). This is information I, as someone
writing calling code, MUST know in order to write robust and correct code.
Consider this fictional pseudo-Java code that is part of a fictional RDBMS backed
lookup server similar to LDAP (or POP3 or whatever):
private void handleClient(Socket socket) {
try {
BufferedReader bin =
new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
BufferedWriter bout =
new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(socket.getOutputStream()));
... authenticate, parse a request
StuffBeingLookedUp stuff;
try {
stuff = myDatabase.getStuff(...);
} catch (SQLException e) {
... log the database problem
bout.write("-ERR internal server error\n");
bout.flush();
return;
}
bout.write("+OK data follows\n");
... write data
bout.flush();
} catch (IOException e) {
... possibly log the problem depending on debuglevel
} finally {
try {
socket.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
/* Assuming the code above has already flush():ed in the successful case,
* just ignore it because the problem is either irrelevant or has already
* been logged.
*/
}
}
}
A couple of things to note:
* The code is able to differentiate between I/O errors having to do with the
communication with the client, from database related errors caused by
the attempt to access the database. In ths context of the server, these are
logically quite different errors and must be treated differently.
* If the SQLException was thrown due to some underlying I/O problem, this information
is not lost; in fact it would be reported as the causal exception in a stacktrace. But
at this level in the calling code, all that is relevant is that it is a database
errors; we don't care whether the database is remote, local or in-memory or what
possible errors the implementation might encounter. Thus we expect the database
API (JDBC and the JDBC driver) to emit only SQLExceptions and subclasses thereof.
Note that someone made a very good point in this thread about how the Common Lisp
condition system allows two components to communicate via conditions, even though
the intervening code has no knowledge or support of said communication. In this case
we could have the calling code (the server) co-operate with the JDBC driver IF this
was desirable. But in cases where it is NOT desirable, we instead run into the problems
below.
How do I do this in Lisp? Consider (and *PLEASE* correct me if I am misstaken on anything):
* Reading the CLHS, the spec is only concearned with type errors when it comes to the
I/O functions (read-line, read-byte, write-byte, etc). The exact condition signaled in
case of a problem is entirely implementation dependent. Thus, if I am to be portable
I *cannot* do what the Java code does above, unless i go out and investigate the
situation for each and every Common Lisp I might want to support.
* Taking sbcl as an example, I have uncovered no documentation as to what conditions
are signaled by the various functions in sb-bsd-sockets (except nothing to the effect
of "might signal some kind of condition"). Looking at the source code I can figure it
out, but even then (if I remember correctly, and I might not because this was a while
ago) the exception hierarchy is mostly concerned with mirroring the possible return
values of underlying syscalls, rather than offering a categorical hierarchy (i.e.,
differentiating "connection failed" from "some error happened during normal I/O
on an open connection", etc - although in THIS case this is not offered by Java
either).
* If after having looked at the sb-bsd-sockets source code I make my code correct
for the case of sbcl, (1) I am still only supporting sbcl, and (2) I have no clue
how "official" the set of signalled exceptions is, or whether it might randomly
change in a future release.
I have experienced the same thing with other Lisp variants (I've looked at a number of
Scheme:s for example). In the case of Scheme the error handling *mechanisms* aren't even
all that useful in some cases; and in the cases where the *mechanism* is powerful "enough"
for my purposes, the documentation offers *no* clue as to actual error conditions signalled
by the library. I haven't gone so far as to inspect the source code of all these Schemes
I've looked at. The same goes for portability API:s like CLOCC and such - no "official"
error signaling seems to exist, and who knows what might happen on different implementations.
A cursory look at some of the source gave me the impression that's it is not just a
documentation issue, but that the issue really isn't tackeled, and code will result in
different conditions on different platforms (CL implementations).
Am I the only one who feel this is a problem? Have I missed something? How do people
solve this problem when writing real programs in Lisp?
For a while I have toyed with the idea of making my first "real" project a "Common Lisp
Common Library" of sorts; which would be a portable library with various functionality
that is often very practical, and which would have properly documented error conditions.
It would also try to present a "Lisp:ish" API rather than "superficial" wrappers around
various POSIX API:s. In short, my goeal would be to be able to write code similar to
the following and have it be portable (excuse any broken indentation and the fact that
it probably wouldn't even compile):
(defun listen-loop (socket)
(handler-case
(loop (start-thread #'handle-client (accept socket)))
(io-error (ioe) (log-error ioe)))
(defun handle-client (stream)
(unwind-protect
(handler-case
(progn
... authenticate and parse request
(handler-case
(let ((stuff (get-stuff client-request)))
(write-line stream "+OK data follows")
... write data)
(database-error
(dbe)
(progn
... log the problem
(write-line stream "-ERR internal server error"))))
(flush stream))
(io-error (ioe) (log-error ioe)))
(handler-case (close stream) (io-error () nil))))
(Things like (with-open-stream ...) to guarantee that the stream is
closed would clean that up a bit)
Does anybode agree with me, even a little? Should I just not bothering doing
something like this because nobody would be interested anyway?
--
/ Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB
PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller <··············@infidyne.com>'
Key retrieval: Send an E-Mail to ·········@scode.org
E-Mail: ··············@infidyne.com Web: http://www.scode.org
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u7jixude5.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
If I'm reading you correctly, one of your complaints is that the
space of possible conditions is not well elaborated, both in terms
of what all the conditions are, and which functions might signal what.
The ANSI standard doesn't have very much to say about that.
Certainly there are lots more conditions than are mentioned in there.
But it's implementation-dependant on what those might be.
> In this regard, I must say that I find Java exemplary. Given a function that
> operates on a stream, or a file, or any kind of external resource, there is
> documentation as to how these error conditions are handled (be it by returning
> some special value or by throwing an exception). This is information I, as someone
> writing calling code, MUST know in order to write robust and correct code.
That should be well documented by the Lisp that you are using.
If it's not, that's a vendor quality issue (and you should get
the vendor to do better, or change vendors I guess.)
> Consider this fictional pseudo-Java code that is part of a fictional
> RDBMS backed lookup server similar to LDAP (or POP3 or whatever):
ANSI Common Lisp doesn't define any interfaces to any RDBMS,
or for that matter to any network, or much of anything, really.
It just barely even defines any conditions for file systems.
But when you select a Lisp library (which may or may not be portable,
so please make sure to find one that meets your requirements in that
respect), it should fully document the conditions that can happen.
> A couple of things to note:
>
> * The code is able to differentiate between I/O errors having to do with the
> communication with the client, from database related errors caused by
> the attempt to access the database. In ths context of the server, these are
> logically quite different errors and must be treated differently.
Lisp can do that.
> * If the SQLException was thrown due to some underlying I/O problem, this information
> is not lost; in fact it would be reported as the causal exception in a stacktrace. But
> at this level in the calling code, all that is relevant is that it is a database
> errors; we don't care whether the database is remote, local or in-memory or what
> possible errors the implementation might encounter. Thus we expect the database
> API (JDBC and the JDBC driver) to emit only SQLExceptions and subclasses thereof.
Lisp can do that.
The condition object that the handler receives contains
the detailed information necessary to make those distinctions.
The structure of of the condition handlers should make sure
that you see the proper conditions. More about that, below.
> How do I do this in Lisp?
[The spec only defines a few conditions, tried SBCL but it didn't
document things well enough, tried the sb-bsd-sockets library but
had to read the source code and guess what the supported API is,
and it's SBCL=specifc anyway.]
Maybe you should consider using a Lisp system that is better
documented than SBCL?
My favorite Lisp system, which is unfortunately not available for
the machines that you have, shipped with a stack of manuals that
was over 4 feet high (and was also online as hypertext in the IDE).
It documented all these things really well. That was 20 years ago.
These days, I use both Lispworks and some of the free Lisp systems.
I find their documentation to be adequate, but that certainly doesn't
mean that it's good enough for you. I haven't seen the documentation
from Franz, but I bet it's really good. I would suggest approaching
your vendor on this issue.
> I have experienced the same thing with other Lisp variants
> (I've looked at a number of Scheme:s for example).
Well, anyone here will tell you that Scheme is evil and you
shouldn't be using it for Real Programs. Where's your Common Sense, man?
But seriously, your problem there sounds mainly the same as with the
Common Lisp implementations and libraries: lack of documentation.
> Am I the only one who feel this is a problem? Have I missed something?
> How do people solve this problem when writing real programs in Lisp?
They either think it's good enough, or they are picking better
libraries (perhaps from the commercial vendors) than you are,
or they are rolling their own portable compatability libraries.
I do all three of those things.
It's probably just not very easy to figure out how to make those
decisions. In Java, it's easier because it's pretty much one-stop
shopping, or at least you know which other major outlets you need
to visit. In Perl, there's CPAN, and there's also lots of marginal
crap that could confuse you. In Lisp, the situation is worse --
about the same as in C, I guess. It's not clear where to look,
who to trust, what you're going to get, etc.
Your model pseudo-program just looks to me like a lot of the code
that I write; I'm not sure why you think you can't write that.
Maybe you are missing something technical about the way that the
condition system works. I never saw you use HANDLER-BIND, which
is more dynamic than HANDLER-CASE. Do you realize that you can
catch conditions, look them over, decide not to handle them and
allow some higher-level caller the chance? Or that you could
handle them by deciding to signal some other condition?
Your complaint about not being able to distinguish one IO error
from another suggests that you might be confused about that.
Your RDBMS APL can catch an IO condition (eg. STREAM-CLOSED),
examine the condition object in detail, and then effectively
turn it into some other condition (eg. RDBMS-SERVER-FAILURE).
> Does anybode agree with me, even a little? Should I just not
> bothering doing something like this because nobody would be
> interested anyway?
I don't think that you are wasting your time, in general.
I suspect that many people have written libraries of the
sort you propose. They might not choose to release them.
But you ought to explore what's out there a little more
before you set off writing your own.
I would start by looking at the libraries that have been graciously
contributed from Franz (and made portable with additional work by
spirited volunteers) . Those seem to be pretty high quality.
For questions about the condition system per se, use this thread.
To ask about libraries for specific purposes (eg. network, DB, IO, etc.)
you should probably start a new thread for each of them, so as to
keep the conversations trackable and for easier indexing.
> That should be well documented by the Lisp that you are using.
> If it's not, that's a vendor quality issue (and you should get
> the vendor to do better, or change vendors I guess.)
Well, it seems to be the case in general - at least for free Lisps. Yet I
gather people *are* using these free Lisps for real programs.
But I am not so much interested in pointing out flaws in the implementation,
as I am i interested in determining whether the *seeming* dis-interest in
documentating error conditions is real (and if so, what I am missing); as opposed
to the lack of documentation simply being a result of lack of time by the implementor
of the APIs.
Though I can certainly see myself paying for e.g. Allegro, I am hesitant to go that
route because (1) there is no platform support guarantee; at the moment they support
certain distributions of Linux, meaning it will "probably" run with various amounts
of tweaking on any given Linux distribution, or on *BSD, but you never know what
will happen in the future. (2) it would lessen the usefulness of anything I write,
since my aim is to write open source software (not in-house commercial stuff).
>>> Consider this fictional pseudo-Java code that is part of a fictional
>> RDBMS backed lookup server similar to LDAP (or POP3 or whatever):
>
> ANSI Common Lisp doesn't define any interfaces to any RDBMS,
> or for that matter to any network, or much of anything, really.
> It just barely even defines any conditions for file systems.
>
> But when you select a Lisp library (which may or may not be portable,
> so please make sure to find one that meets your requirements in that
> respect), it should fully document the conditions that can happen.
I realize Common Lisp itself does not go as far as to define all the things you
find in a language like Java. However, the spec does not even specify a
generic "some kind of I/O related problem" base condition for use by implementors
when creating more specific error conditions! And that is kind of consistent with
the seemingly predominant tendency to mostly just ignore error handling.
In any case; I realize it is an implementation dependent issue; it's just that I
have not found *A SINGLE* implementation of Common Lisp (or any other Lisp) that
properly documents error conditions. Again - the commercial ones may very well be
very good in this regard.
>> * The code is able to differentiate between I/O errors having to do with the
>> communication with the client, from database related errors caused by
>> the attempt to access the database. In ths context of the server, these are
>> logically quite different errors and must be treated differently.
>
> Lisp can do that.
Ok - given the right implementation I will grant that.
>> * If the SQLException was thrown due to some underlying I/O problem, this information
>> is not lost; in fact it would be reported as the causal exception in a stacktrace. But
>> at this level in the calling code, all that is relevant is that it is a database
>> errors; we don't care whether the database is remote, local or in-memory or what
>> possible errors the implementation might encounter. Thus we expect the database
>> API (JDBC and the JDBC driver) to emit only SQLExceptions and subclasses thereof.
>
> Lisp can do that.
Same here.
>> How do I do this in Lisp?
>
> [The spec only defines a few conditions, tried SBCL but it didn't
> document things well enough, tried the sb-bsd-sockets library but
> had to read the source code and guess what the supported API is,
> and it's SBCL=specifc anyway.]
>
> Maybe you should consider using a Lisp system that is better
> documented than SBCL?
I will probably have another look at Allegro.
> These days, I use both Lispworks and some of the free Lisp systems.
> I find their documentation to be adequate, but that certainly doesn't
> mean that it's good enough for you. I haven't seen the documentation
> from Franz, but I bet it's really good. I would suggest approaching
> your vendor on this issue.
Which free Lisp systems would that be? I would be very much interested in hearing
that. I really don't have any extreme requirements when it comes to documentation;
it's just this specific issue of error conditions that have become somewhat of
a pet peeve of mine...
> Your model pseudo-program just looks to me like a lot of the code
> that I write; I'm not sure why you think you can't write that.
Perhaps I wasn't being very clear; by not being "able" to write
code like that I mean that I can't do it portable, and not without
digging through a lot of source code to satisfy myself that I am
really handling all expected runtime conditions.
(Again subject to the possibility that commercial Lisps, or free
Lisps I have not tried, are better on this point.)
> Maybe you are missing something technical about the way that the
> condition system works. I never saw you use HANDLER-BIND, which
> is more dynamic than HANDLER-CASE. Do you realize that you can
> catch conditions, look them over, decide not to handle them and
> allow some higher-level caller the chance? Or that you could
> handle them by deciding to signal some other condition?
Yes I do realize the condition system is much more flexible than
what I used in my little example (not necessarily unwinding the stack,
using established restarts, etc). I'm not used to *using* these features
of the languge though, so my example might have been much better written
in a much clearer way using common idioms that leverage this advantage.
In any case; I have absolutely no problem with the condition signalling
*system* - that of Common Lisp is about as advanced and flexible as
I have ever come across in a language.
> Your complaint about not being able to distinguish one IO error
> from another suggests that you might be confused about that.
I was more trying to refer to the fact that the Java code comes easily
based on a cursory examination of the API docs, while the equivalent
Lisp code (with condition types properly substituted for the implementation
in question) comes after digging through the source code and hoping
that it won't change in the future.
(Once again - might not apply to all Lisps, just those I've tried.)
>> Does anybode agree with me, even a little? Should I just not
>> bothering doing something like this because nobody would be
>> interested anyway?
>
> I don't think that you are wasting your time, in general.
> I suspect that many people have written libraries of the
> sort you propose. They might not choose to release them.
> But you ought to explore what's out there a little more
> before you set off writing your own.
Perhaps I will take a serious look at Allegro and just use that
until I am much more experienced with Lisp than I am now, and
re-visit the idea of a portable library at that time.
> I would start by looking at the libraries that have been graciously
> contributed from Franz (and made portable with additional work by
> spirited volunteers) . Those seem to be pretty high quality.
Will do.
> For questions about the condition system per se, use this thread.
> To ask about libraries for specific purposes (eg. network, DB, IO, etc.)
> you should probably start a new thread for each of them, so as to
> keep the conversations trackable and for easier indexing.
Will do; I don't have any specific issues at the moment though.
In an case; it was interesting to hear your thoughts. Thank you!
--
/ Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB
PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller <··············@infidyne.com>'
Key retrieval: Send an E-Mail to ·········@scode.org
E-Mail: ··············@infidyne.com Web: http://www.scode.org
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uy8bdl4ko.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
Peter Schuller <··············@infidyne.com> writes:
> > These days, I use both Lispworks and some of the free Lisp systems.
> > I find their documentation to be adequate, but that certainly doesn't
> > mean that it's good enough for you. I haven't seen the documentation
> > from Franz, but I bet it's really good. I would suggest approaching
> > your vendor on this issue.
>
> Which free Lisp systems would that be? I would be very much
> interested in hearing that. I really don't have any extreme
> requirements when it comes to documentation; it's just this specific
> issue of error conditions that have become somewhat of a pet peeve
> of mine...
I play around with all of them, but have delivered applicatins
for clients using CMUCL. (This is why I said that it was good
enough for me, but I'm not you! I've had decades of prior
experience so maybe can get by with less documentation.)
> > Your model pseudo-program just looks to me like a lot of the code
> > that I write; I'm not sure why you think you can't write that.
>
> Perhaps I wasn't being very clear; by not being "able" to write
> code like that I mean that I can't do it portable, and not without
> digging through a lot of source code to satisfy myself that I am
> really handling all expected runtime conditions.
My code (like that) is portable. I do most of my development
in Lispworks, but I sometimes deliver the program on CMUCL.
> Perhaps I will take a serious look at Allegro and just use that
> until I am much more experienced with Lisp than I am now, and
> re-visit the idea of a portable library at that time.
Look at Lispworks,too.
Have fun!
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uu0m1swc7.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:
> Your RDBMS APL can catch an IO condition (eg. STREAM-CLOSED),
TYPO[TYPO {iota} 'L'] {assign} 'I'
(But it's just not the same without the funny glyphs...)
······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:
>> How do I do this in Lisp?
>
> [The spec only defines a few conditions, tried SBCL but it didn't
> document things well enough, tried the sb-bsd-sockets library but
> had to read the source code and guess what the supported API is,
> and it's SBCL=specifc anyway.]
<http://www.sbcl.org/manual/Sockets-Overview.html#Sockets%20Overview>
is very minimal documentation, but I think it's enough to do something
like the OP wants:
(define-condition database-condition ()
())
(define-condition database-socket-condition (database-condition)
((socket-condition :initarg :socket-condition :reader socket-condition))
(:report
(lambda (s c)
(format s "Received a socket condition: ~A" (socket-condition c)))))
(handler-bind ((sb-bsd-sockets:socket-condition
(lambda (c)
;; maybe something up the stack wants to handle this?
(signal c)
;; otherwise, error on a database condition
(error 'database-socket-condition :socket-condition c))))
(do-stuff))
or possibly
(restart-case
(handler-bind ((sb-bsd-sockets:socket-condition
(lambda (c)
(invoke-restart 'signal-database-socket-condition c))))
(do-stuff))
(signal-database-socket-condition (c)
(error 'database-socket-condition :socket-condition c)))
depending on needs (and of course these restart / handler functions
don't need to be as tightly bound as I have written them).
Christophe
><http://www.sbcl.org/manual/Sockets-Overview.html#Sockets%20Overview>
> is very minimal documentation, but I think it's enough to do something
> like the OP wants:
Indeed; I had missed that part (I had been looking at the function list and
associated documentation).
--
/ Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB
PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller <··············@infidyne.com>'
Key retrieval: Send an E-Mail to ·········@scode.org
E-Mail: ··············@infidyne.com Web: http://www.scode.org
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u8y38qdu5.fsf@nhplace.com>
Peter Schuller <··············@infidyne.com> writes:
> But 'significant' means real practical stuff.
Then what kind of error do you signal when you get a hardware memory error
in an operation that is supposed to not signal any error, but that discovers
it has an incorrect result?
Java sweeps this under the rug of "runtime exceptions", but that makes it
hard to do type dispatch, and even harder in a world that is entirely
single-inheritance, since it assures that you cannot do
ARITHMETIC-EXCEPTION
/
RUNTIME-EXCEPTION FLOATING-POINT-EXCEPTION
\ /
RUNTIME-FLOATING-POINT-EXCEPTION
Instead you must have
EXCEPTION
/ \
RUNTIME-EXC STATIC-EXC
/ \
RUNTIME-ARITHMETIC-EXC STATIC-ARITHMETIC-EXC
...
Are you arguing that this is "better"?
Here's what I have to say about the design of "practical" stuff:
You cannot, through linguistic definition, make the Universe be other
than it is. All the ISO standards in the world will not make the world
single-inheritance. All the requirements in the world to declare all
possible conditions at compile time will not make those the only possible
conditions. The world is not static. I prefer a programming language
that is not either.
Nothing keeps you from annotating your program with exceptions based on what
YOU want to say about YOUR programs. Nothing keeps you from writing a
post-processor that assures that all your connectivity is solid according to
YOUR standards.
The question is not that here. You are (apparently) alleging that the
language (by which you can read "all people") should adhere to your theory.
You are advocating a theocracy. We have tried to design a language that
separates church from state.
> .. in real applications,
> error handling is very important. A networking server must be able to deal
> with sockets errors without terminating; a mail user agent must be able
> to differentiate between expected real-life problems (i.e., networking
> issues) and internal bugs. Unfortunately, I have personally found the
> error handling situation lacking in Lisp (aswell as Ruby and Smalltalk). It
> is not that the condition system in and of itself has a problem; it is rather
> how it is used and documented.
If you worry about these things, you need to be in a serious
discussion with your implementor about what situations are not
catchable. They SHOULD only be signaling fatal things using ERROR or
SERIOUS-CONDITION. You should be able to "catch" (but not necessarily
restart) those things. If you want to catch things without losing
state, you need to move these dynamic handlers inward in your program
to the nearest point where you don't mind the setup overhead but can
wrap around an operation you want to be restartable.
This is an issue of HOW you do it, not whether you can do it.
Curiously, although you don't say it, Java has the opposite problem. It
isn't about how but whether, because the language thinks it knows better
than the programmer. It forces me to NOT write code that will handle errors
that it thinks it cannot signal. That doesn't mean those errors won't
occur--the REAL WORLD determins what errors can occur [abstractly, I mean,
not as a language manifestiation]. But it means Java won't let you signal
them "in program" and won't let you negotiate how to handle them "in program",
and so forces yuu implement, extralinguistically, the support you want.
This does not seem to me practical for an expressional programming language,
and is why I classify Java as an high-level assembly language--to be used
but not seen. Your mileage may vary.
> Specifically, the problem is that the conditions signaled by a function is
> almost never documented!
This is not a problem of the language. You can easily force them to be
documented:
(DEFPACKAGE RIGID-LISP
(:USE COMMON-LISP)
(:SHADOW DEFUN)
(:EXPORT CAR CDR CONS ... RIGID-DEFUN ...)) ;<--better done programmatically,
; but you get the idea
(DEFMACRO RIGID-DEFUN (NAME CONDITIONS BVL ...) ...)
How easy is it to do the equivalent in Java to relax the standard if you
don't want it?
> I am not talking about every single possible problem
> that might occurr as a result of internal library bugs or bugs in calling
> code.
I am.
What solid program expects its libraries to be bug-free? Do you believe
that, by a bit of time and care, including the careful application of some
sort of induction, it's possible to build an infallible system?
The problem with proving programs correct is not the math, it's the
willingness to encode in logic all the possible ways a program can fail.
> But the *EXPECTED* conditions that *ARE* going to happen in real life.
That doesn't sound very rigorous or practical.
> In this regard, I must say that I find Java exemplary.
I find it exemplary, too--of something I'd least like to use. Heh.
But, you know, I'm not saying it shouldn't be used. I just question that
using it will provide all the things people think it will.
> Given a function that operates on a stream, or a file, or any kind
> of external resource, there is documentation as to how these error
> conditions are handled (be it by returning some special value or by
> throwing an exception).
Good documentation can be solved by commerce. If there is a market, people
will buy it. But if no one is springing for serious dollars for doc, then
don't think that you can fix this through the language design process.
It's been tried, I'm sure. I think Ada wanted a lot of doc. COBOL, too.
And you don't see those ruling the day.
And indeed, Java has lots of doc, but it's not always structured in the way
that's most useful. There turns out to be great value in documentation that
is not 100% aligned with the structure of the modules. I'm not discounting
the need for this structured doc, too--CLHS does it. I have internal doc
in my code that does this. But it is not all people are asking for when they
want doc. And language standards can't require it.
In 1980's, TECO used to require documentation on every function. And Emacs
Lisp, as a consequence, has this flavor. Emacs Lisp code is much more heavily
documented than other lisp dialects.
We tried to encourage documentation in Common Lisp by adding DOCUMENTATION
functions and whatnot, but that hasn't led people to do what they won't do
anyway.
And in this day of a tight economy, the price of excess will be squeezed out
of everything. If you can make time to market without such excess, that's
what will happen. You don't fix this by making the language more cumbersome;
that just makes the language an impractical vehicle for commercial use.
> This is information I, as someone
> writing calling code, MUST know in order to write robust and correct code.
Then talk to your vendor and tell him how much you'd pay.
Because I'm ASSUMING you mean you have no lisp on your desk now because you
won't pay for anything that is less than that. Or else I assume your meaning
of "must" is synonymous with a sense of optionality, since if you buy without
requiring it, YOU are making it optional, not required.
Lisp vendors react to money, not rhetoric in the design of their product.
The only Lisp dialect I know that specified all the conditions it signaled
in low-level code as Zetalisp, on the lisp machine, and it went bankrupt
years ago. (Not for that reason, but the point is that it has been tried.
And while it was useful, it didn't make the language so valuable that it
survived other, much more petty, market pressures.)
> Consider this fictional pseudo-Java code that is part of a fictional
> RDBMS backed lookup server similar to LDAP (or POP3 or whatever):
>
> ...
> A couple of things to note:
>
> * The code is able to differentiate between I/O errors having to do with the
> communication with the client, from database related errors caused by
> the attempt to access the database. In ths context of the server, these are
> logically quite different errors and must be treated differently.
Lisp lets you do the same. It does not standardize the behavior. Contact
your vendor and ask what conditions are signaled. They can tell you.
It is certainly EASY to tell you at the blunt level of an overall condition
like I/O error or SQL error. Lisp probably gives you hugely more refined
recovery than other languages. But these aspects are not part of standards
of today, so don't look to Lisp to answer your questions. Look to the
vendor. (It's not even clear that expecting standards to fix things would
work--it would impede the rapid change and responsiveness to the market
that comes from leaving it under vendor control.)
> * If the SQLException was thrown due to some underlying I/O problem,
> this information is not lost; in fact it would be reported as the
> causal exception in a stacktrace.
Stacktrace? Ugh. How low-level is your error reporting? Lisp will give you
lots better ways to cope than this. I suggest that you have not scratched
the surface of what it has to offer you.
> But at this level in the calling code, all that is relevant is that it
> is a database > errors; we don't care whether the database is remote,
> local or in-memory or what possible errors the implementation might
> encounter. Thus we expect the database API (JDBC and the JDBC driver)
> to emit only SQLExceptions and subclasses thereof.
I disagree with this. An SQL error is if SQL makes a mistake. A hardware
error, for example, is a sign of a serious malfunction in your computer. If
you mask this as an SQL error, you will file the report in the wrong place,
and will wait much longer to handle it than you should. Lisp's theory, which
you can feel free to agree with or disagree with, but which is at the heart of
dynamic condition handling, is that you should handle precisely the errors
you expect and not others. If I do
(handling-foo-errors ()
(invoke-bar-facility #'foo-service))
and BAR masks out any FOO error, how will HANDLING-FOO-ERRORS ever get a
chance to correct it.
KEEP IN MIND, that unlike the Java or most any other condition system save
ones like Dylan that are Lisp-like, conditions are handled in the point on
the stack wher they are signaled, and the stack has not been unwound. So a
FOO error could be RECOVERED quietly without the containing BAR facility
knowing it even happened. That's unlike anything Java offers.
> Note that someone made a very good point in this thread about how the Common Lisp
> condition system allows two components to communicate via conditions, even though
> the intervening code has no knowledge or support of said communication.
Indeed, a number of such points are made in the condition papers at my web
site. You might read them.
> In this case we could have the calling code (the server)
> co-operate with the JDBC driver IF this was desirable.
As it could happen in Lisp, but it seems cumbersome and non-abstract.
> But in
> cases where it is NOT desirable, we instead run into the
> problems below.
In what case would it be non-desirable to a person who understands Lisp and
how it is SUPPOSED to be used to modify a bunch of intervening functions
that were not involved, just to make them more fragile against future code
change??
> How do I do this in Lisp?
It's possible to do all of those things you cite straightforwardly.
> Consider (and *PLEASE* correct me if I am misstaken on anything):
>
> * Reading the CLHS, the spec is only concearned with type errors when
> it comes to the I/O functions (read-line, read-byte, write-byte, etc).
> The exact condition signaled in case of a problem is entirely
> implementation dependent.
You are incorrect. "only concerned with" is not an appropriate aggregation.
Standards cost money. We had no more money to keep doing standards-making.
So we stopped at this point. CERTAINLY we cared about doing more. It cost
a minimum of $450,000 and 6 years of full-time work by editors, not counting
man-years of review time, a lot of travel time, in-person time at dozens of
meetings, email in the tens of thousands of messages, etc. to produce ANSI
Common Lisp. Do you want to pony up the next chunk of cash to continue
that process? You sell us short by saying we were "only concerned with"
this much.
> Thus, if I am to be portable
> I *cannot* do what the Java code does above,
Java (i.e., Sun) has spent HUGELY more than we did making this portable.
(AND, incidentally, Sun's Java process has not been as open as ours.)
Find us a funding source as generous as Sun and we'll get right on it.
Seriously, this is such a ridiculous comparison I can bearly stand it.
> unless i go out and investigate the
> situation for each and every Common Lisp I might want to support.
Money, money, money.
And every single person who GIVES AWAY free software in the world should
think about how they bring down the price of software because now the world
thinks it should get everything FOR FREE. Which means it's EVEN HARDER
to get funding.
If you don't think money is everything in this equation, you're
denying reality.
> * Taking sbcl as an example, I have uncovered no documentation as to
> what conditions are signaled by the various functions in sb-bsd-sockets
> (except nothing to the effect of "might signal some kind of condition").
There are two ways to answer here:
First, SBCL is itself harming the industry by catering to the notion that you
don't have to pay to acquire something. If you had had to pay money to them,
maybe you would not have bought it because market forces would have said
"it doesn't offer what I want" and maybe it would have gotten better because
it wanted those dollars. But since it isn't responsive to dollars in that way,
it doesn't respond to that kind of market force.
Second, I don't doubt that the SBCL (or any) maintainers would take
your cash directly to get what you want. But I'm betting you're so spoiled
by Sun giving away free Java that you think anyone can mount the resources
they've mounted to manage a free operation of that size. I don't mean to
say this in a way that maligns you, just that opens your eyes to the fact
that what you get from Sun is very commercially valuable and the fact that
they don't make you PAY that value, they recover it in other ways, makes you
mistakenly believe that ANYONE could muster that kind of value and give it
away and find some other way to recover the cost. The world isn't
that simple. So before you go praising Java, consider whether if Java were not
free from Sun or anyone, how much would you pay for it. Now imagine if you
paid that same amount for a Lisp how much more doc they could provide. But
you won't pay that for Lisp, and not because it doesn't add value, but because
you can get Java for free, and it drives down the cost you'd pay for Lisp or
anything.
There are other threads here talking about trying to find jobs. You're kidding
yourself if you don't think all this is interconnected.
I saw a thread where someone said he was charging $1/hr and wondered
if someone wanted to underbid him. That is the road to the death of
an industry. The problem right now is not that the US charges too
much, it's that the rest of the world charges too little. When their
standard of living comes up enough, and if people learn some sense and
stop making free software, then we CS people may be able to charge for
the value we provide. But as long as everyone is just scrambling for
enough to eat, and when they're not eating and not working they think
it's appropriate to just give stuff away, the bottom will be forever
gone from the market.
Computer science people need to understand that they have something of
value that the world wants, and they need to charge for it. Not give
it away. Money is not evil. Money keeps people fed. Failing to charge
money won't mean other people don't get rich--it will just mean that no
one with computer science sensibilities will get rich. People who rule
the world will be people with no understanding of math, process, etc.
All the ethical force of a lot of bright people is presently hugely
misdirected due to the false god of free software.
And then it filters down to arguments like this where people try to
discuss value of things without discussing money. And compare things
they plan to pay no money to. Well, "zero" is in this equation a lot
(the amount you want to pay, mostly, but in a lot of places), and zero
tends to have non-linear effects on lots of equations, causing you to
misjudge things.
> Looking at the source code I can figure it
Lucky you can afford that. More value for free. No wonder again they
have no money coming in to support a doc effort.
> out, but even then (if I remember correctly, and I might not
> because this was a while ago) the exception hierarchy is mostly
> concerned with mirroring the possible return values of
> underlying syscalls, rather than offering a categorical
> hierarchy (i.e., differentiating "connection failed" from "some
> error happened during normal I/O on an open connection", etc -
> although in THIS case this is not offered by Java either).
Funny, I thought the "free software" answer to this was that YOU who want it
should contribute money or time to add what you want.
You sound like you're not holding up your end of the trade.
But then, you're not required to. Ain't "freedom" great?
> * If after having looked at the sb-bsd-sockets source code I make my
> code correct for the case of sbcl, (1) I am still only supporting sbcl,
> and (2) I have no clue how "official" the set of signalled exceptions
> is, or whether it might randomly change in a future release.
Ain't free software great? (did I say this already?)
Next time I'd withhold your funds from these evil folks.
> I have experienced the same thing with other Lisp variants
You've used others? But I thought it "MUST" have the doc you needed.
I guess "MUST" does in fact mean "doesn't really have to at all", as
I suspected above.
The free market is not a magic engine. It works only in one way. You
hold money back from people who don't give you what you want until they do.
When either they don't ask for money or you won't give it or you will freely
give it whether they give you what you want or not, I don't see how you
expect it to work. I've never seen "newsgroups" in any discussion of how
the free market works.
> (I've
> looked at a number of Scheme:s for example). In the case of Scheme
> the error handling *mechanisms* aren't even all that useful in some
> cases; and in the cases where the *mechanism* is powerful "enough"
> for my purposes, the documentation offers *no* clue as to actual
> error conditions signalled by the library. I haven't gone so far as
> to inspect the source code of all these Schemes I've looked at. The
> same goes for portability API:s like CLOCC and such - no "official"
> error signaling seems to exist, and who knows what might happen on
> different implementations. A cursory look at some of the source
> gave me the impression that's it is not just a documentation issue,
> but that the issue really isn't tackeled, and code will result in
> different conditions on different platforms (CL implementations).
>
> Am I the only one who feel this is a problem?
You're one of a small number who periodically don't understand the
economics and so barks up the wrong tree, aggravating people who have
given you stuff for free, wishing they'd give you more for free.
I don't like free software, but some people do. Even so, those people
who do have a moral code that says that when you don't like something,
you should fix it, not sit back and whine about it. That doesn't help.
So pick your paradigm. Like free software and work within it, or like
commercial software and spend your money where it will help.
And don't pretend that Java is a fair comparison to anyone. It isn't
a commercial endeavor per se. To understand Java, you must broaden your
view of the world wide enough that the money is accounted for. You have
to go wide enough to see all the consulting that goes into it. And you
have to understand that when it started, it didn't just survey available
languages for one to use, it made up a bunch of vaporware claims like
"write once, run eveywhere" which didn't turn out to be true. "write once,
debug everywhere" was soon after the motto. It's paid a lot to address
some of that, but the language continues to change when they promised it
wouldn't.
> Have I missed something?
Lots of things.
> How do people solve this problem when writing real programs in Lisp?
If they have a legitimate commercial need, they get in touch with their
vendor (by which I mean either a free software maker or a commercial seller,
incidentally, but either needs money to survive) and they tell them what
the missing feature is worth. Then the vendor says whether the amount they
have to offer is enough incentive. And then they do the rest, the part they
think is cheaper for them to do than to pay a vendor to do, themselves.
> For a while I have toyed with the idea of making my first "real"
> project a "Common Lisp Common Library" of sorts; which would be a
> portable library with various functionality that is often very
> practical, and which would have properly documented error
> conditions.
Just to give away? Do you think that will drive up or down the cost of
software? Do you think it will improve your ability to make money later?
What is your present source of funding?
If you think you'll sell this, do you think you'll add so much value or
make something so original that some free software "sniper" won't immediately
follow your effort with something free?
> It would also try to present a "Lisp:ish" API rather than "superficial" wrappers around
> various POSIX API:s. In short, my goeal would be to be able to write code similar to
> the following and have it be portable (excuse any broken indentation and the fact that
> it probably wouldn't even compile):
>
> (defun listen-loop (socket)
> (handler-case
> (loop (start-thread #'handle-client (accept socket)))
> (io-error (ioe) (log-error ioe)))
>
> (defun handle-client (stream)
> (unwind-protect
> (handler-case
> (progn
> ... authenticate and parse request
> (handler-case
> (let ((stuff (get-stuff client-request)))
> (write-line stream "+OK data follows")
> ... write data)
> (database-error
> (dbe)
> (progn
> ... log the problem
> (write-line stream "-ERR internal server error"))))
> (flush stream))
> (io-error (ioe) (log-error ioe)))
> (handler-case (close stream) (io-error () nil))))
>
> (Things like (with-open-stream ...) to guarantee that the stream is
> closed would clean that up a bit)
>
> Does anybode agree with me, even a little? Should I just not bothering doing
> something like this because nobody would be interested anyway?
If you want my bet:
People are interested in bleeding you dry for anything you want to
offer for them to use for free.
As to paying, the only way to find out is to do it and see what comes.
There is no way to ask the question in advance and trust the answer.
It might work, but if you asked and people said "I'll pay" probably six
other people will rush to compete with you. And maybe no one really will
pay, and all six will lose. Or maybe there will be a big market. But
that might be true even if no one responded. comp.lang.lisp is not the
market, and arguably not even representative of the market.
> Peter Schuller <··············@infidyne.com> writes:
>> Thus, if I am to be portable
>> I *cannot* do what the Java code does above
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> wrote on Sun, 24 Apr 2005:
> Java (i.e., Sun) has spent HUGELY more than we did making this portable.
> (AND, incidentally, Sun's Java process has not been as open as ours.)
> Find us a funding source as generous as Sun and we'll get right on it.
> Seriously, this is such a ridiculous comparison I can bearly stand it.
Kent, the first half of your posting was about a technical comparison
between Lisp conditions and Java exceptions. I don't think Peter understood
the model of Lisp conditions, so mostly he was confused that there was a
missing piece to Lisp.
But the second half of your posting was about economics. That's interesting,
and possibly true, but from a technical comparison perspective perhaps
irrelevant.
If Peter wants to call some library database code, and portably distinguish
between network failures vs. SQL failures, that sounds like a reasonable goal.
And if Java has standardized these exceptions, but Lisp has not standardized
the analogous conditions, that's a reasonable technical evaluation to make.
Yes, you can then enter a side discussion about money, and why ANSI CL might
have missed some interesting topic areas due to resource constraints. But
really: this is one of the first times I've seen a Lisp advocate shy away
from a technical comparison. ANSI CL dominates pretty much every other
language in pretty much every way that matters (to "real" programmers), that
it seems alien to avoid a straight-up technical comparison.
In those small corners where some other language has managed to improve on
CL, is it really so difficult to acknowledge the improvement?
Java has a lot of mistakes in its design (for a "general purpose programming
language"), but one of the nice things they did was standardize some current
important algorithms, like networking, compression, regular expressions, etc.
If ANSI CL were being designed today, surely much these same libraries would
be added to the new CL design, and their lack is more due to the time frame
of standardization (and what was important at that time) than to financial
constraints.
I'm just so used to the fans of the all the other languages avoiding a direct
technical comparison with Lisp, that it seems odd to see a fan of Lisp do the
same thing.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ubr83q736.fsf@nhplace.com>
Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
> Kent, the first half of your posting was about a technical comparison
> between Lisp conditions and Java exceptions. I don't think Peter understood
> the model of Lisp conditions, so mostly he was confused that there was a
> missing piece to Lisp.
>
> But the second half of your posting was about economics.
Well, yes, I agree with that. But he led with a remark about what the
language cares about. And that is, inherently, an economic position.
So I shifted modes to accomodate.
As I view it, the community underwent a shift at the end of ANSI CL.
Before that time, we relied on the big government super-state to tell
us what the language was. Everyone waited with a sense of grand
anticipation to find out what their language would be like. That's how
it had always been.
But standards are like interprocess synchronization in a
multi-processing system. They induce the possibility of a wait state
that the community does not want to afford if it can't. In the early
days of Computer Science, they provided such a critical need that they
had to be done. In the modern world, no one can afford the wait.
In the early days, vendors had all the money and there were almost no
users. In the modern world, users have all the money and there are
almost no vendors. To keep up, one must track the money. No vendor
can hope to keep up with what the user community can do, and vendors
certainly cannot afford to cripple themselves by holding back progress
to wait for their fellow vendors to agree. There is no longer a
single-axis monotonic notion of progress. The press "forward", such
as it is, is now a parametric graph, not a conventional graph.
Everyone's moving in a different direction, marching to a different
drummer as it were, and the only way sometimes to detect progress is
to compare a given vendor's work to their prior work. Or so I would
claim...
So the modern measure of what the language cares about is not "what's
in the standard" but "what individual vendors [in which I include free
implementation makers], working uncoordinated, invest in to serve their
various markets".
> That's interesting, and possibly true, but from a technical
> comparison perspective perhaps irrelevant.
Perhaps.
>
> If Peter wants to call some library database code, and portably distinguish
> between network failures vs. SQL failures, that sounds like a reasonable goal.
Absolutely. But the wrong conclusion is to say the language doesn't care.
The right conclusion is to say that talking to vendors about what's not
in the language is essential.
> And if Java has standardized these exceptions, but Lisp has not standardized
> the analogous conditions, that's a reasonable technical evaluation to make.
Heh. Here I would say that's a reasonable economic evaluation to make.
I'm not sure that standardization is a technical effect. It certainly has
technical impact. Standards and standards-related deicisions are often
made for non-technical reasons.
> Yes, you can then enter a side discussion about money, and why ANSI CL might
> have missed some interesting topic areas due to resource constraints. But
> really: this is one of the first times I've seen a Lisp advocate shy away
> from a technical comparison. ANSI CL dominates pretty much every other
> language in pretty much every way that matters (to "real" programmers), that
> it seems alien to avoid a straight-up technical comparison.
I'm not avoiding such a comparison. I'm saying you're crippling your view of
what the language today is by considering ANSI only. If you consider ANSI
only, you also can't create exe files, can't do CORBA, can't talk to SQL,
etc. yet most implementations can do things like this.
> In those small corners where some other language has managed to improve on
> CL, is it really so difficult to acknowledge the improvement?
The usefulness of the feature I do acknowledge. But I'm saying that in
practical terms, for people trying to get work done, this information IS
available. Maybe not as portably as you'd like, yes. But then, Java
overplays its portability card IMO.
> Java has a lot of mistakes in its design (for a "general purpose programming
> language"), but one of the nice things they did was standardize some current
> important algorithms, like networking, compression, regular expressions, etc.
Yes, this is why I never fail to emphasize its use as an assembly language.
It defines a very powerful virtual machine, quite appropriate to enabling
useful applications above it. I just don't like the cumbersome syntax and
some of the programming language decisions.
> If ANSI CL were being designed today, surely much these same libraries would
> be added to the new CL design, and their lack is more due to the time frame
> of standardization (and what was important at that time) than to financial
> constraints.
Doubtless.
> I'm just so used to the fans of the all the other languages avoiding a direct
> technical comparison with Lisp, that it seems odd to see a fan of Lisp do the
> same thing.
I agree such a comparison is useful. I just felt it was crippled by
considering only the standard. It's not like the community has been stagnant
since 1994. We have not been making a new standard since then because ours
holds up fine. New work HAS been done, and any fair analysis has to look to
where that work is happening not just say that because it's not being done
by a well-funded central organization, it isn't there.
> Then what kind of error do you signal when you get a hardware memory error
> in an operation that is supposed to not signal any error, but that discovers
> it has an incorrect result?
Basically any kind of error; as calling code, I don't care (except in very
VERY special circumstances). As I stated in my original post, I was primarily
talking about *expected* error conditions. In other words, things like
networking errors or I/O errors while reading/writing a file (especially
the former).
> Java sweeps this under the rug of "runtime exceptions", but that makes it
> hard to do type dispatch, and even harder in a world that is entirely
> single-inheritance, since it assures that you cannot do
As I also stated in the pervious post, I am not advocating checked exceptions,
nor am I advocated the Java exception handling mechanism. I was merely making
an observation about the general tendency to ignore or de-emphasize error
handling (something which is not limited to Lisp), specifically in cases
where there is an obvious need to deal with errors.
> ARITHMETIC-EXCEPTION
> /
> RUNTIME-EXCEPTION FLOATING-POINT-EXCEPTION
> \ /
> RUNTIME-FLOATING-POINT-EXCEPTION
>
> Instead you must have
>
> EXCEPTION
> / \
> RUNTIME-EXC STATIC-EXC
> / \
> RUNTIME-ARITHMETIC-EXC STATIC-ARITHMETIC-EXC
> ...
>
> Are you arguing that this is "better"?
No I am not, or at least I did not intend to. What was it about my original
post that lead you to this conclusion?
> Here's what I have to say about the design of "practical" stuff:
>
> You cannot, through linguistic definition, make the Universe be other
> than it is. All the ISO standards in the world will not make the world
> single-inheritance. All the requirements in the world to declare all
> possible conditions at compile time will not make those the only possible
> conditions. The world is not static. I prefer a programming language
> that is not either.
>
> Nothing keeps you from annotating your program with exceptions based on what
> YOU want to say about YOUR programs. Nothing keeps you from writing a
> post-processor that assures that all your connectivity is solid according to
> YOUR standards.
>
>
> The question is not that here. You are (apparently) alleging that the
> language (by which you can read "all people") should adhere to your theory.
> You are advocating a theocracy. We have tried to design a language that
> separates church from state.
Again, I explicitly stated that I was not advocated checked exceptions. I
am not interested in this. I am only interested in being able to handle
*expected* conditions. Aside from 50 line one-off throw-away scripts, pretty
much all "real world" applications are in need of some error handling. Whether
it be a small application that monitors network connectivity or a MUA that
wants to behave properly in the face of networking errors and protocol errors.
Or a web spider that must be able to handle failure conditions without terminating;
or just about any kind of network server which must be able to deal with
network related errors specific to a client, that do not prevent the server
from continuing.
In light of this, I was missing a portable and documented way of identifying
these kinds of errors.
Once again, and I cannot stress this enough, I am *NOT* talking about every
single error condition that might theoretically happen; I am only talking about
the obvious expected errors that you KNOW will happen when you write the calling
code, and that you want to handle.
> If you worry about these things, you need to be in a serious
> discussion with your implementor about what situations are not
> catchable. They SHOULD only be signaling fatal things using ERROR or
> SERIOUS-CONDITION. You should be able to "catch" (but not necessarily
> restart) those things. If you want to catch things without losing
> state, you need to move these dynamic handlers inward in your program
> to the nearest point where you don't mind the setup overhead but can
> wrap around an operation you want to be restartable.
>
> This is an issue of HOW you do it, not whether you can do it.
I don't understand what it is you believe my problem is. All I am saying
is that in able to deal with error conditions properly (be it ERROR:s
or SERIOUS-CONDITION:s or something else), I want to know *what* error
conditions are signaled and under what circumstances (again: for expected
errors).
In *most* cases the issues is *not* about *restarting* an operationg (which
requires very specific knowledge about what went wrong), but rather logging
the error, perhaps informing the user or a client program connected to
the server, and performing proper clean-up.
> Curiously, although you don't say it, Java has the opposite problem. It
> isn't about how but whether, because the language thinks it knows better
> than the programmer. It forces me to NOT write code that will handle errors
> that it thinks it cannot signal. That doesn't mean those errors won't
> occur--the REAL WORLD determins what errors can occur [abstractly, I mean,
> not as a language manifestiation]. But it means Java won't let you signal
> them "in program" and won't let you negotiate how to handle them "in program",
> and so forces yuu implement, extralinguistically, the support you want.
> This does not seem to me practical for an expressional programming language,
> and is why I classify Java as an high-level assembly language--to be used
> but not seen. Your mileage may vary.
I agree, I never argued against this.
>> Specifically, the problem is that the conditions signaled by a function is
>> almost never documented!
>
> This is not a problem of the language. You can easily force them to be
> documented:
In MY code. The issue I was observing was a general lack of such documentation
for existing API:s.
> How easy is it to do the equivalent in Java to relax the standard if you
> don't want it?
Java is not even in the same ballpark as CL. I never argued against this.
>> I am not talking about every single possible problem
>> that might occurr as a result of internal library bugs or bugs in calling
>> code.
>
> I am.
Be my guest, but it has nothing to do with my original post. Handling EVERY
error that might EVER happen (including those that result from broken
hardware) is a *HUGELY* different problem from simply being able to
determine "ok, the file i tried to remove did not exist" or "ok, some
networking error occurred while trying to talk to the client".
> What solid program expects its libraries to be bug-free? Do you believe
> that, by a bit of time and care, including the careful application of some
> sort of induction, it's possible to build an infallible system?
No.
> The problem with proving programs correct is not the math, it's the
> willingness to encode in logic all the possible ways a program can fail.
Sure.
>> But the *EXPECTED* conditions that *ARE* going to happen in real life.
>
> That doesn't sound very rigorous or practical.
So you're telling me that if you want to write - say - a packaging system
that, among other things, needs to create, delete and modify the permissions
of files (aswell as create/delete symbolic links), you would not be helped
by having conditions documented? You would actually *WANT* to go digging
around in the source code of the CL implementation of your choice (assuming
it implemented the API necessary for the above) in order to determine how
to find out if a file deletion failed? And then have to re-dig through all
that source code in future releases because you have no idea what is
"official" and what is not?
And again, I'm not talking about errors being the result of broken hardware
or some internal bug in the API or whatever. I'm talking about the completely
obviouis and very real possible condition of "file not found" or "permission
denied".
> But, you know, I'm not saying it shouldn't be used. I just question that
> using it will provide all the things people think it will.
Again (sorry about sounding like a broken record), I am *NOT* advocating
Java as a language surperior to CL.
> Good documentation can be solved by commerce. If there is a market, people
> will buy it. But if no one is springing for serious dollars for doc, then
> don't think that you can fix this through the language design process.
> It's been tried, I'm sure. I think Ada wanted a lot of doc. COBOL, too.
> And you don't see those ruling the day.
>
> And indeed, Java has lots of doc, but it's not always structured in the way
> that's most useful. There turns out to be great value in documentation that
> is not 100% aligned with the structure of the modules. I'm not discounting
> the need for this structured doc, too--CLHS does it. I have internal doc
> in my code that does this. But it is not all people are asking for when they
> want doc. And language standards can't require it.
There are many reasons why documentation tends to never be totally complete. But
once again, I am talking about *OBVIOUS* error conditions. If I write code to
remove a file the very first thing I want to do is handle the case where the
removal failed. If I am writing a network server, the very first thing I want
to do is handle the case of I/O errors occurreding when communication with
a client. These aren't weird edge cases that are unforseen; there are completely
obvious error conditions that almost all 'real' applications will want to handle.
(And by "handle" I mean "identify and do SOMETHING about, even if just cleaning up
and/or logging the error")
> And in this day of a tight economy, the price of excess will be squeezed out
> of everything. If you can make time to market without such excess, that's
> what will happen. You don't fix this by making the language more cumbersome;
> that just makes the language an impractical vehicle for commercial use.
Not trying to.
> Then talk to your vendor and tell him how much you'd pay.
>
> Because I'm ASSUMING you mean you have no lisp on your desk now because you
> won't pay for anything that is less than that. Or else I assume your meaning
> of "must" is synonymous with a sense of optionality, since if you buy without
> requiring it, YOU are making it optional, not required.
>
> Lisp vendors react to money, not rhetoric in the design of their product.
This is completely and utterly irrelevant to the discussion at hand. If you
want to rant on about how I, as a private individual, should somehow finance
entire corporations to churn out their product - fine, but it has no bearing
on my original post.
Even assuming I am willing to pay for a commercial Lisp (which is no great
assumption I assure you, though at the moment I cannot afford the fee
required for the CL I was looking at possibly buying), there is still the issue
that any non-free CL is going to be restrictive in terms of portability. That
has nothing to do with money.
> The only Lisp dialect I know that specified all the conditions it signaled
> in low-level code as Zetalisp, on the lisp machine, and it went bankrupt
> years ago. (Not for that reason, but the point is that it has been tried.
> And while it was useful, it didn't make the language so valuable that it
> survived other, much more petty, market pressures.)
See above about documenting ALL conditions.
> Lisp lets you do the same. It does not standardize the behavior. Contact
> your vendor and ask what conditions are signaled. They can tell you.
You are missing my point again. Nevermind what is possible theoretically; I
was talking about overall tendencies and wondering what people actually did
when writing real world programs.
>> * If the SQLException was thrown due to some underlying I/O problem,
>> this information is not lost; in fact it would be reported as the
>> causal exception in a stacktrace.
>
> Stacktrace? Ugh. How low-level is your error reporting? Lisp will give you
> lots better ways to cope than this. I suggest that you have not scratched
> the surface of what it has to offer you.
I know the lisp condition system is very flexible. But the very point you
are trying to make - that documenting EVERY SINGLE condition that may arrise
is not feasable - is indicative that there is indeed a need for a good
way to identify what went wrong in the case of an unforseen problem. If
calling code cannot handle the problem, it is very useful if the problem can
at least be logged (in the form of a full backtrace), so that the person
who wrote the code (or the person using the code) can try to deduce what
actually went wrong.
> I disagree with this. An SQL error is if SQL makes a mistake. A hardware
> error, for example, is a sign of a serious malfunction in your computer. If
> you mask this as an SQL error, you will file the report in the wrong place,
> and will wait much longer to handle it than you should. Lisp's theory, which
> you can feel free to agree with or disagree with, but which is at the heart of
> dynamic condition handling, is that you should handle precisely the errors
> you expect and not others. If I do
See above about hardware errors, this isn't what I am talking about.
> KEEP IN MIND, that unlike the Java or most any other condition system save
> ones like Dylan that are Lisp-like, conditions are handled in the point on
> the stack wher they are signaled, and the stack has not been unwound. So a
> FOO error could be RECOVERED quietly without the containing BAR facility
> knowing it even happened. That's unlike anything Java offers.
I know. Again, I am not advocating Java. I realize CL's conditions system is
hugely more flexbiel than that of Java.
>> Note that someone made a very good point in this thread about how the Common Lisp
>> condition system allows two components to communicate via conditions, even though
>> the intervening code has no knowledge or support of said communication.
>
> Indeed, a number of such points are made in the condition papers at my web
> site. You might read them.
I would be very interesting in doing so. Which site is that?
>> In this case we could have the calling code (the server)
>> co-operate with the JDBC driver IF this was desirable.
>
> As it could happen in Lisp, but it seems cumbersome and non-abstract.
>
>> But in
>> cases where it is NOT desirable, we instead run into the
>> problems below.
>
> In what case would it be non-desirable to a person who understands Lisp and
> how it is SUPPOSED to be used to modify a bunch of intervening functions
> that were not involved, just to make them more fragile against future code
> change??
They should not have to modify anything. But if calling code and the programmer
writing that code does not have control over what the layer-in-between is using
as the next layer, then calling code and the programmer writing it will not know
what conditions are signaled by that code (unless it is documented).
>> Consider (and *PLEASE* correct me if I am misstaken on anything):
>>
>> * Reading the CLHS, the spec is only concearned with type errors when
>> it comes to the I/O functions (read-line, read-byte, write-byte, etc).
>> The exact condition signaled in case of a problem is entirely
>> implementation dependent.
>
> You are incorrect. "only concerned with" is not an appropriate aggregation.
> Standards cost money. We had no more money to keep doing standards-making.
> So we stopped at this point. CERTAINLY we cared about doing more. It cost
> a minimum of $450,000 and 6 years of full-time work by editors, not counting
> man-years of review time, a lot of travel time, in-person time at dozens of
> meetings, email in the tens of thousands of messages, etc. to produce ANSI
> Common Lisp. Do you want to pony up the next chunk of cash to continue
> that process? You sell us short by saying we were "only concerned with"
> this much.
Perhaps my phrasing was sub-optimabl; but all I meant was that it would have been
extremely useful to have a general-purpose "io-error" (or something similar) that
could have been documented at that level (and if more detailed errors are not
feasable to document in Common Lisp, at least there is a common base class for
I/O related errors). This would allow at least basic error handling in a portable way.
Note that I never intended to critize the CL spec as such, or the people behind it.
I was merely using it as an example of the general tendency I have experienced
among Lisps in general (Common Lisp and a bunch of Schemes), aswell as other
languages like Smalltak, Ruby and Python.
>> Thus, if I am to be portable
>> I *cannot* do what the Java code does above,
>
> Java (i.e., Sun) has spent HUGELY more than we did making this portable.
> (AND, incidentally, Sun's Java process has not been as open as ours.)
> Find us a funding source as generous as Sun and we'll get right on it.
> Seriously, this is such a ridiculous comparison I can bearly stand it.
Come on. I am merely talking about documentation of the most obvious
error condition; not some hugely complex and demanding process. I do understand
that the Common Lisp spec does not include this (and I can certainly
understand why). I was more "interested" in the general *tendench*; i.e., for
a given API written by a random person or company, there tends to be a
distinct lack of information on error conditions, even when they are very
much relevant and likely to happen.
I was more interested in "what am I missing? how do people write real programs
under this condition?".
>> unless i go out and investigate the
>> situation for each and every Common Lisp I might want to support.
>
> Money, money, money.
>
> And every single person who GIVES AWAY free software in the world should
> think about how they bring down the price of software because now the world
> thinks it should get everything FOR FREE. Which means it's EVEN HARDER
> to get funding.
>
> If you don't think money is everything in this equation, you're
> denying reality.
I never mentioned money in my original post.
Suppose I have an infinite amount of money (or at least enough so that I can
buy a $x (500 < x < 5000) license without difficulty). I am *still* hesitant
to go with non-free (free as in speech) solutions because they tend to limit
portability and flexibility. I abhore binary-only distributions and the problems
they create (practical problems, not some abstract ideological issue).
If I want to be able to move between Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD for
example, there is no commercial Lisp in existence, that I am aware of, that
allows me to do that (other than HOPING that the lastest version will work in
Linux emulation on the OS in question). I am mentioning those four OS:es because
it is an actual example - I am using these OS:es and I would like to be able
to run my own software on them.
As a result I am likely to go with a free (as in speech) alternative (basically
sbcl, cmucl or clisp at this point).
> There are two ways to answer here:
>
> First, SBCL is itself harming the industry by catering to the notion that you
> don't have to pay to acquire something. If you had had to pay money to them,
> maybe you would not have bought it because market forces would have said
> "it doesn't offer what I want" and maybe it would have gotten better because
> it wanted those dollars. But since it isn't responsive to dollars in that way,
> it doesn't respond to that kind of market force.
>
> Second, I don't doubt that the SBCL (or any) maintainers would take
> your cash directly to get what you want. But I'm betting you're so spoiled
> by Sun giving away free Java that you think anyone can mount the resources
> they've mounted to manage a free operation of that size. I don't mean to
Spoiled by Java? Not likely. Not in this context. See above - Java is NOT
exactly my idea of a portable language when it comes to being able to run
things on "less mainstream" OS:es. The only reason Java is usable at all on
Linux/BSD is because of the media hype that has sorrounded Linux for the
past few years.
> say this in a way that maligns you, just that opens your eyes to the fact
> that what you get from Sun is very commercially valuable and the fact that
> they don't make you PAY that value, they recover it in other ways, makes you
> mistakenly believe that ANYONE could muster that kind of value and give it
> away and find some other way to recover the cost. The world isn't
> that simple. So before you go praising Java, consider whether if Java were not
> free from Sun or anyone, how much would you pay for it. Now imagine if you
> paid that same amount for a Lisp how much more doc they could provide. But
> you won't pay that for Lisp, and not because it doesn't add value, but because
> you can get Java for free, and it drives down the cost you'd pay for Lisp or
> anything.
>
> There are other threads here talking about trying to find jobs. You're kidding
> yourself if you don't think all this is interconnected.
Again, nothing to do with my original post.
> I saw a thread where someone said he was charging $1/hr and wondered
> if someone wanted to underbid him. That is the road to the death of
> an industry. The problem right now is not that the US charges too
> much, it's that the rest of the world charges too little. When their
> standard of living comes up enough, and if people learn some sense and
> stop making free software, then we CS people may be able to charge for
> the value we provide. But as long as everyone is just scrambling for
> enough to eat, and when they're not eating and not working they think
> it's appropriate to just give stuff away, the bottom will be forever
> gone from the market.
Take it up with RMS :)
>> Looking at the source code I can figure it
>
> Lucky you can afford that. More value for free. No wonder again they
> have no money coming in to support a doc effort.
Again I was talking about a general tendency rather than trying to
complain that "nobody documents sbcl properly".
> Funny, I thought the "free software" answer to this was that YOU who want it
> should contribute money or time to add what you want.
>
> You sound like you're not holding up your end of the trade.
>
> But then, you're not required to. Ain't "freedom" great?
So we're going to this tired old argument. Sure. I am not allowed
to point out possible problems with a piece of software until I have
thrown out linux/bsd/apache/ssh/firefox/opera/etc and re-implemented
EVERYTHING myself from scratch? Not likely.
> You're one of a small number who periodically don't understand the
> economics and so barks up the wrong tree, aggravating people who have
> given you stuff for free, wishing they'd give you more for free.
I'm not even going to address this.
> I don't like free software, but some people do. Even so, those people
> who do have a moral code that says that when you don't like something,
> you should fix it, not sit back and whine about it. That doesn't help.
See above.
> And don't pretend that Java is a fair comparison to anyone. It isn't
> a commercial endeavor per se. To understand Java, you must broaden your
> view of the world wide enough that the money is accounted for. You have
> to go wide enough to see all the consulting that goes into it. And you
> have to understand that when it started, it didn't just survey available
> languages for one to use, it made up a bunch of vaporware claims like
> "write once, run eveywhere" which didn't turn out to be true. "write once,
> debug everywhere" was soon after the motto. It's paid a lot to address
> some of that, but the language continues to change when they promised it
> wouldn't.
I was not interested in the economical dynamics of the situation; I was
merely using Java as a suitable "benchmark" when it came to documenting
error conditions.
>> For a while I have toyed with the idea of making my first "real"
>> project a "Common Lisp Common Library" of sorts; which would be a
>> portable library with various functionality that is often very
>> practical, and which would have properly documented error
>> conditions.
>
> Just to give away?
Yes.
> Do you think that will drive up or down the cost of
> software? Do you think it will improve your ability to make money later?
Perhaps.
> What is your present source of funding?
In-house software development as a full-time employee.
> If you think you'll sell this, do you think you'll add so much value or
> make something so original that some free software "sniper" won't immediately
> follow your effort with something free?
I would not be interested in selling such a thing. It's the most useful being
free.
--
/ Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB
PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller <··············@infidyne.com>'
Key retrieval: Send an E-Mail to ·········@scode.org
E-Mail: ··············@infidyne.com Web: http://www.scode.org
Peter Schuller wrote:
>> You're one of a small number who periodically don't understand
>> the economics and so barks up the wrong tree, aggravating people who have
>> given you stuff for free, wishing they'd give you more for free.
>
> I'm not even going to address this.
Right you are.
Peter Seibel gave a very interesting (and funny) talk at the European
Common Lisp Meeting yesterday. The first half of his talk gave an
overview of effective strategies for driving people away from Lisp.
Using the phrase "You don't understand X" was one of his examples.
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ubr804hmq.fsf@nhplace.com>
Peter Schuller <··············@infidyne.com> writes:
> As I also stated in the pervious post, I am not advocating checked
> exceptions, nor am I advocated the Java exception handling
> mechanism. I was merely making an observation about the general
> tendency to ignore or de-emphasize error handling (something which
> is not limited to Lisp), specifically in cases where there is an
> obvious need to deal with errors.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. It was simply a HUGE project
to be explicit on this and there was no money to do that project.
We all wished for it, but none of us had access to the US Treasury's
machine for printing money.
In other words, for better or worse, you're reading more into intent than
is there.
Let me also echo a caution that someone from then-NBS (now NIST) made
in one of the very first X3J13 standards meetings: Standards are not
about design, they are about codifying what is already agreed upon.
To be sure, there were things in the ANSI CL standard that defied
this. But in MOST of those cases, it was because there were multiple
conflicting proposals and new design was felt to be the only path
toward community compromise, since adopting wholesale one or another
vendor's way of doing things while leaving another vendor completely
out in the cold was not acceptable. So multiple vendors had class
systems, and we had to make a new one to achieve consensus. But
multiple vendors did NOT do error systems at that time, so we simply
did not have the community experience to drive that process. It
wasn't that no vendor wanted this, it was that there was not enough
commercial experience to know what was wanted and so we didn't want to
prematurely standardize.
Reading this lack of consensus on details as a lack of interest is a
bit like reading the lack of a State Prayer in the US as saying there
is no interest in religion in the US. Sometimes the details matter
so much that standardization doesn't work.
Could we go back and make more standard now? Maybe. But we'd risk
destabilizing what we have. And it's not clear that it's needed. Not
because ways of doing things aren't need, but because _ANSI_ standards
are not the only vehicle for deliving ways of doing things.
> Again, I explicitly stated that I was not advocated checked exceptions.
I guess in all your advocacy of and/or comparison to Java I just missed
this point. Sorry about that. (It probably threw off some of my other
comments, too. Rather than address all of them in detail I'll just make
a vague blanket apology for derivative effects here as well.)
> I am only interested in being able to handle *expected* conditions.
I agree it's more work, but is there some reason "implementation-dependent"
or even "implementation-defined" does not work?
> > Then talk to your vendor and tell him how much you'd pay.
> [...]
> > Lisp vendors react to money, not rhetoric in the design of their product.
>
> This is completely and utterly irrelevant to the discussion at hand. If you
> want to rant on about how I, as a private individual, should somehow finance
> entire corporations to churn out their product - fine, but it has no bearing
> on my original post.
This is the part I'm struggling to understand--why you think that's not
relevant.
And, btw, when you use "corporation" do you mean to say you missed all those
places where I noted that by vendor I always mean to include a maker
of free software? (There needs to be some generic term for "supplier of
an implementation", and I use the term "vendor" for that, usually trying to
explicitly remark on my non-stnadard use of this term. Are you, likewise,
using "corporation" in that non-standard way or are you reading past my
parenthetical remarks about meaning to be thus inclusive and erroneously
thinking thatI am talking only of commercial Lisps when I make these remarks?)
> Even assuming I am willing to pay for a commercial Lisp (which is no
> great assumption I assure you, though at the moment I cannot afford
> the fee required for the CL I was looking at possibly buying), there
> is still the issue that any non-free CL is going to be restrictive
> in terms of portability. That has nothing to do with money.
The reason I'm assuming it does is that you're apparently concluding
that you're not yourself part of the community. you're standing on
the outside and not thinking that you yourself can change things.
when you don't see something in the formal standard written and
published over 10 years ago, you project the assumption (rightly or
wrongly) that the community doesn't care and that nothing has
happened since. take the bull by the horns. contact your vendor
and ask. tell them what you would pay. get your friends to pony up
money, too. i'm not saying pay for the whole thing UNLESS you find
you're the only one asking. what I'm saying is that your fair share
of the cost is
x/y
where
x = cost of doing what you want
y = number of people who want it enough to pay for it
It might be that x/y is too expensive for you. And then that's your answer.
Or it might be that you have a disagreement with your vendor about whether
y people will really pay. The problem with being a vendor is that you have
to guess and hope, and you pay the price of being wrong. Vendors are very
conservative about that computation. But if it's a feature that matters to
you and you believe that the value of y is large but the vendor doesn't,
you can help your case by instead of concluding that the vendor doesn't care,
going to the community and getting people to contact the vendor and assure
them that they'd pay if something was included.
OR, if it's open source as you say, WRITE THE DOC yourself and give it to
the vendor and say "Is this your intent for now and furture releases? If it
is, maybe you could thus document it." and then go to the vendor you think
that disagrees (causing non-portability) and tell them you care about
portability and ask if they could compromise.
This is how progress is made. By people shepherding change. Look how hard
people have worked to get DEFSYSTEM-like things into the language. Let me
paraphrase one of the vendors from ten+ years ago when I was pushing this:
"It's not that I don't want to include DEFSYSTEM in my release. Hell, I'm
distributing a CD-ROM full of shareware with my implementation and there are
at least three implementations of DEFSYSTEM on that CD-ROM. And I've got NO
problem putting DEFSYSTEM into my implementation. Just tell me which one
to put there. Because I've got no idea."
[And for DEFSYSTEM, in the modern world, I think the answer is: there is
no answer. Each provides some value, and my personal answer to this problem
is to get people to standardize on protocol. See my "Large Systems" paper
at my web site if you're curious how this could be reconciled portably.]
But for conditions I grant you it's not like syntax but like the underlying
protocol of my large systems paper--it's something that can't vary. But it
depends on individuals or a group getting together and changing things.
You have passion about this. Don't use your passion to convince people you
can't do something. Use your passion to name the specific change you want
and to push it through. If all you aspire to is convincing people there is
a problem, you'll win on that. But then people will think you're done and
they'll be demoralized.
I don't have trouble with your claim that this needs to be done. I have
trouble with your claim that no one cares. People DO care. But they are
waiting for someone with passion to fix each and every thing. Each of us
has only some time or some money. Use your time on earth doing your part
of something constructive, don't squander it in the false satisfaction of
thinking the problem is lack of caring and patting yourself on the back
for having succeeded. People already know it, what they seek is a workable
solution. Make one. Document something. Make your hobby-horse be getting
everyone to adopt it, NOTWITHSTANDING the absence of a very cumbersome
standards process to bless it. We don't need the blessing. We just need
the accidental fact.
When I see non-portabilities, I send email to vendor A or vendor B saying
"I think on this issue you should change." I don't say "because the
standard says". Often the standard is ambiguous or mute and everyone has
a reason for saying they already conform. But we all know portability matters,
and so sometimes it just takes the vendor being made to believe that it's
"their turn" to yield a little.
And, btw, this that I'm suggesting is all about each of our finite resources,
and finite energies, and whatnot. Which is why this is all about economics,
whether you're paying for your Lisp or not.
> I know the lisp condition system is very flexible.
[I somehow missed this in the original thing. Repeated apology here.]
> But the very point you
> are trying to make - that documenting EVERY SINGLE condition that may arrise
> is not feasable
No, i wasn't trying to make that point. I was trying to make the point that
ERROR _is_ a documentation of every single condition that might arise.
I'd prefer it if there were more fine grained names sometimes for the
conditions that might get signaled, sure. But I diagree with the
technical claim that we don't document what might get signaled. ERROR
might get signaled. It might be called FILE-NOT-FOUND or
NETWORK-INTERFACE-MISSING, but it's still ERROR. I'm not saying the
problem you're having doesn't exist. I'm just saying that your
on-and-off characterization of the error as "the error is not
documented" is the wrong phrasing and is not helping your case, it's
just confusing me into side-tracks of having to correct terminology.
Writing
(ERROR 'FILE-NOT-FOUND :NAME #P"/foo/bar")
_is_ an implementation of "an error of type ERROR will be signaled."
You might wish it said something more refined, but the problem is not
not that the error isn't documented, it's that the error that is documented
is not of an adequately specific type for you to allow you to distinguish
it from other kinds of errors that you don't want to handle. This is a
legitimate thing to want. It just needs to be spoken about properly as
you ask for it.
Your failure to use good error and type terminology makes it hard for
me to answer you on-topic. And when I reply correcting your
terminology, you think I'm saying I disagree with your cause, which I
don't. I just can't talk about causes with incorrect terminology--it
makes it appear I'm agreeing with false premises. [Sort of like the
"have you stoppped beating your wife?" problem. You might or might
not beat your wife, but if you don't, it's hard to have a discussion
on the subject that begins with a false premise.]
> > Indeed, a number of such points are made in the condition papers at my web
> > site. You might read them.
>
> I would be very interesting in doing so. Which site is that?
http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/
look for the 1990 and 2001 papers on conditions.
> Perhaps my phrasing was sub-optimabl; but all I meant was that it
> would have been extremely useful to have a general-purpose
> "io-error" (or something similar) that could have been documented at
> that level (and if more detailed errors are not feasable to document
> in Common Lisp, at least there is a common base class for I/O
> related errors). This would allow at least basic error handling in a
> portable way.
IO-ERROR is there, I think. It's spelled STREAM-ERROR, though.
I don't think that's your problem in the specific. That doesn't mean
there aren't missing specific condition classes, I just don't think
this is the one. And in some cases maybe it doesn't say to use STREAM-ERROR
though I bet a lot of times you can.
> Note that I never intended to critize the CL spec as such,
I don't mind people criticizing the CL spec, btw.
The spec itself is largely text I wrote (or at least edited), and I've
got little ego about that. I'm the first to rush to criticize the text.
I often cringe at how crude it was.
But I hide behind resources sometimes. We had only so much money. And
we did the best we can. I say that NOT to be defensive but to teach a
life lesson about what's reasonable to expect and what's not. Because I
was right there asking for more and being told over and over again how
finite resources buys only a finite result. Because I know that was the
real issue. And because everyone should know that too.
> > Java (i.e., Sun) has spent HUGELY more than we did making this portable.
> > (AND, incidentally, Sun's Java process has not been as open as ours.)
> > Find us a funding source as generous as Sun and we'll get right on it.
> > Seriously, this is such a ridiculous comparison I can bearly stand it.
>
> Come on. I am merely talking about documentation of the most obvious
> error condition;
No, you're assuming that these are obvious.
First, we tried really, really hard to get agreement on as much as we could,
and you are under-estimating what is "obvious".
Some things may have changed in the interim. So keep that in mind, too.
But also, some things were just not as obvious as you think.
On streams, in particular, we had a lot of conflicts. Vendors felt then
that things you probably think "obvious" would restrict their implementation.
Keep in mind there was very little experience with conditions at the time.
A lot of people rejected the condition system we have completely and I
had to do a HUGE sale to the community that we should have ANYTHING. The
condition system itself may seem obvious now but it was not then.
The only implementation that more than just ERROR, that had any condition
classes at all, was the Lisp Machine, and people kept saying it required
special purpose implementations. I had to write a portable implementation
and give it away to convince people. And even then they didn't believe it.
I kept saying "JUST LOAD THE CODE. REALLY. IT WORKS." It took years of
lobbying to get them to just load it and little by little they would trickle
in with phone calls saying "Uh, I finally loaded your code. You're right,
it doesn't take special hardware. Can we, uh, actually use that code?"
And I'd say "of course". [See the original proposal and original
implementation--actually, revision 18 of that, just to give you some idea
of how many iterations it went through before adoption, at my web site.]
And even then, when accepted into the standard, CLOS was also new. So
no one was sure that [and this was a HUGE sticking point] that multiple
inheritance was there for the long run. So the committee INSISTED that
no pre-defined error condition could rely on multiple inheritance. All
error classes we defined had to be ones that made sense in a single-inheritance
system. So we couldn't install the "obvious" things like many file conditions
because the only extant, working, tested implementation was Symbolics Genera,
and it relied heavily on multiple inheritance and did not want the standard
to break it, while other vendors didn't want to commit to multiple
inheritance. "file not found", just to take a point, can happen when a
network is down, as a temporary error. Or it can happen when the network
is up becasue of a permanent error of the file just not being there. Both
result in a file not being visible. It can also happen due to a directory
not being present. And some of these make assumptions about host file
systems, which implies agreeing on more details about pathnames than we may
have specified. Signaling that a host is down was something some people
wanted to do by specifying a host, which gets into whether a host is
a representable object or just a string--some wanted one, some another. And
that's another way to bog down a proposal. So there were legit points of
disagreement. But don't call this a lack of caring. Call it a legitimate
reason that there is not a standard.
Propose a standard now and maybe people will adopt it WHETHER OR NOT
you do it formally. Adoption won't come on comp.lang.lisp. It will come
by your one-by-one convincing vendors to care. comp.lang.lisp may put you
in touch with people who can help, but since "me, too" posts are discouraged
here, mostly you'll find dissent, not support in this venue.
> not some hugely complex and demanding process. I do understand
> that the Common Lisp spec does not include this (and I can certainly
> understand why). I was more "interested" in the general *tendench*; i.e., for
> a given API written by a random person or company, there tends to be a
> distinct lack of information on error conditions, even when they are very
> much relevant and likely to happen.
>
> I was more interested in "what am I missing? how do people write real
> programs under this condition?".
Most people don't write portable programs. They write semi-portable.
They write to one implementation. When they port, they add some #+/#-
conditionals. They try to isolate this into macros. e.g.,
(defmacro handling-sql-errors (&body forms)
#+LispWorks ...
#+Franz ....)
Each time they port, they elaborate these a bit.
It seems to me that MANY people when they encounter a porting issue
will write to comp.lang.lisp saying "how do i...". That seems
normal. Your post seemed, by contrast, to have been leading with a
broad allegation/conclusion of "lack of caring", which seemed to me
way off base. Which is why I reacted strongly. I think you just don't
understand the issue of "obviousd".
Nor did any of us, by the way. In 1984, Steele published CLTL.
In 1986, we all (the people who worked on CLTL) got together in Monterrey,
California (a beautiful venue, btw) and had a meeting about whether there
was anything that needed fixing. We found we had no way to "vote" because
there were many new people there and no way to consolidate opinions. In the
end, this is how we came to ANSI. But in the process, Steele had a page or
two document labeled "obvious" or "non-controversial" or some such. Something
on the order of magnitude of about 50 things, each a one-liner like
"Add a function XOR which is like AND and OR but does the obvious thing."
He was _sure_ that no one would object to these. Nearly every one was objected
to by someone. And from this, we all learned a lot about how much we had
in common.
Note well again: This didn't mean no one cared about these issues. Most
they did. But they wanted to address each in different ways.
It's the issue of non-caring that I snagged on in your posts. The language
cares a lot. The people care a lot. But consensus is hard to achieve in
a diverse community where people's care has led to use, and where change,
even change for the better, can break things.
> > Money, money, money. [...]
>
> I never mentioned money in my original post.
Money is just a way of accounting for the fact that things in the world cost.
You did mention things you wanted, and I mentioned that the reason you aren't
getting it is an issue of resource.
Do not assume I mean dollars, except as a tally. It takes time to do
everything. It takes time for me to write this. Be glad I'm not billing
you to answer this message. ;) But don't think it doesn't cost me to
answer it.
> I abhore [sic] binary-only distributions and the problems
> they create (practical problems, not some abstract ideological issue).
I personally prefer not to look at source, even when it's there.
I prefer to look at doc.
Which is what makes this whole discussion odd. You want doc, and
I agree with you.
But you seem to think it's not your responsibility to make or to pay for.
In my world, where people pay for software, you just say what you'd pay.
And you hope others are paying too, so the cost is spread over all of them.
In your world, where people give you stuff for free, I thought you
were supposed to contribute the doc that was missing, as your
contribution to the whole sharing thing. Or you contract a freeware
maintainer to add the doc that will then be free for others. Maybe I
misunderstand the social contract of freeware, but I thought that was
how it worked.
> If I want to be able to move between Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD for
> example, there is no commercial Lisp in existence, that I am aware of, that
> allows me to do that (other than HOPING that the lastest version will work in
> Linux emulation on the OS in question). I am mentioning those four OS:es because
> it is an actual example - I am using these OS:es and I would like to be able
> to run my own software on them.
By the way, again to help you with the history, CL was standardized
before the only operating systems in the world were linux, windows and
pc. We planned for about two dozen operating systems, all with
radically different file systems. This made it hard to get agreement
too. Maybe some agreement would be easier now.
But then, don't assume all progress is monotonic. Let's not plan on the
world never getting better, and on there never being a new operating system
in the future. So I hope the decisions we make won't be betting against
progress. (I think you can satisfy both needs. But care is required.)
> [context elided]
> Spoiled by Java? Not likely. Not in this context. See above - Java is NOT
> exactly my idea of a portable language
(another place I was confused by your presentation i guess. sorry)
> > I saw a thread where someone said he was charging $1/hr and wondered
> > if someone wanted to underbid him. That is the road to the death of
> > an industry. The problem right now is not that the US charges too
> > much, it's that the rest of the world charges too little. When their
> > standard of living comes up enough, and if people learn some sense and
> > stop making free software, then we CS people may be able to charge for
> > the value we provide. But as long as everyone is just scrambling for
> > enough to eat, and when they're not eating and not working they think
> > it's appropriate to just give stuff away, the bottom will be forever
> > gone from the market.
>
> Take it up with RMS :)
Heh. Don't think I haven't. And may yet again. Not that dealing with
him privately is of much value. Again, this is an issue of how to be
constructive.
(I rant about it sometimes here on comp.lang.lisp, but just to do
consciousness-raising. And I get email from people who thank me for
doing so, because a lot of people are on autopilot about it and had
not stopped to think about it. Or were thinking they were alone and
are glad to know someone else thinks the same. So I think it's not
pointless for me to do. But I have the realistic understanding that
my speaking about it doesn't solve the problem--it just creates a
consciousness.)
It's fine if all you want to do is raise consciousness, too, but if you
want to change something, you'll have to do something different. Just as
I will if I want to fix this free sofware thing...
> > You're one of a small number who periodically don't understand the
> > economics and so barks up the wrong tree, aggravating people who have
> > given you stuff for free, wishing they'd give you more for free.
>
> I'm not even going to address this.
Probably just as well. I phrased it badly. It's not like I know you
personally and I try to be more careful about my wording in such cases.
Sometimes people think I am overly verbose. And maybe sometimes they are
right. But sometimes the reason I run long is that I don't think that
sentences like "You seem like someone who..." should be shortened to
"You are someone who..." because it loses the sense that it's my opinion.
And here I slipped and left out a "seems", making it appear that this
was other than a statement about my perception. So I apologize for not
having been more long-winded. ;)
> I was not interested in the economical dynamics of the situation; I was
> merely using Java as a suitable "benchmark" when it came to documenting
> error conditions.
Hmm. I guess I'm not interested in the economic dynamics either... as
a first-order effect. I'm just compelled to notice that, interested
or not, economics are what drives us all, even those of us doing free
software. So we inevitably confront economics, like it or not.
When I first started answering questions here about the ANSI CL spec,
people would ask questions they thought were technical. "Why does x
happen?" or "Why did they make the foo function do this?" and they
would expect a technical answer. But the answer is not always
technical. Often it is not technical. It is often political. Or
economic. That's not because it's how I like to express it. It's not
because I'm an economics major. It's not because I'm money grubbing
or politically scheming. It's just because it's true, and the truth
is sometimes hard to avoid. And when you don't speak about truth, you
end up with weird superstition like "no one cares" filling in because
nothing else seems to make sense.
I'm reminded of a friend who has a running thing with his girlfriend
(I can't remember who has which side, and maybe it doesn't matter)
where one of them claims they "like x" but the other observes they
"never do x". The person says "I never have time." And the other
says says, "Well, I'm sorry, but if you never have time for x, it's
not reasonable to conclude you like it. You don't do it, so therefore
you don't like it." It frustrates the person terribly. It's a
legitimate philosophical question, I guess, whether you can like
things you never do. And I guess it touches on the question of
whether there is an economics of "to like". I don't think there is
necessarily consensus.
First of all, let me say a few things in general. It may be that my original
post came across very critical of Common Lisp (that is, the Common Lisp
standard). This was not my intent. While I did use the abscence of
certain error conditions in CL as an example, this is not the focal point
of my "frustration". I was reflecting over the situation in general with
most API:s that deal with external circumstances (and thus are expected
to fail). My original "complaint", if you will, was not specific to Lisp,
but is a general issue I have experience with a number of libraries/API:s
for several different languages. My reasons for using Common Lisp as an
example are simply that (1) this is comp.lang.lisp and (2) Common Lisp
is what I want to use for the projects I have in mind.
> Nothing could be farther from the truth. It was simply a HUGE project
> to be explicit on this and there was no money to do that project.
> We all wished for it, but none of us had access to the US Treasury's
> machine for printing money.
I won't debate the facts you are pointing out. But I will say that I did
not indend to critisize the CL standardisation effort. Even disregarding
any monetary or time based constraints, I can certainly understand the
lack of certain things in the CL spec; things that have become much more
important in "modern" times. In particular, I do understand that you
consider my comparison with Java unfair; but it was truly not meant to
critize Lisp as compared to Java. I used Java as an example because it
happens to be very representative of what I am after when it comes to
*this specific (and very narrow) issue*.
[ snipped some very interesting few paragraphs on the CL standardization process
that I loved reading, but do not have much to say aboue since I really was
never trying to argue against any of it ]
>> I am only interested in being able to handle *expected* conditions.
>
> I agree it's more work, but is there some reason "implementation-dependent"
> or even "implementation-defined" does not work?
No; it does work. My frustation was primarily based on the difficulty I have
experienced in finding *out* those implementation dependent details. I was
interested in what people *do* in practice, as I have not run / looked at a
lot (actually, pretty much none) Common Lisp applications intended for
end-users, where showing a debugger with available restarts is not acceptible.
I probably put too much emphasis on the portability issue, which I suppose
contributed to my entire post sounding very critical of CL.
[ vendors and their financing ]
> This is the part I'm struggling to understand--why you think that's not
> relevant.
Because I was not making a complaint against anybody in particular, nor
against library/API authors in general (even if I may have given that
impression). I was (and still am) truly more interested in how these issues
are solved, in general, in real-world Lisp applications.
But then, I don't really know of any such applications. Particularly none
that use the libraries/API:s that I have been looking at. Perhaps they
just don't exist.
> And, btw, when you use "corporation" do you mean to say you missed all those
> places where I noted that by vendor I always mean to include a maker
> of free software? (There needs to be some generic term for "supplier of
> an implementation", and I use the term "vendor" for that, usually trying to
> explicitly remark on my non-stnadard use of this term. Are you, likewise,
> using "corporation" in that non-standard way or are you reading past my
> parenthetical remarks about meaning to be thus inclusive and erroneously
> thinking thatI am talking only of commercial Lisps when I make these remarks?)
Sorry - that was my misstake. I was commenting under the impression that you
where "implying" (by saying I should talk to my vendor) that I should buy
a commercially supported Lisp or stop complaining.
>> Even assuming I am willing to pay for a commercial Lisp (which is no
>> great assumption I assure you, though at the moment I cannot afford
>> the fee required for the CL I was looking at possibly buying), there
>> is still the issue that any non-free CL is going to be restrictive
>> in terms of portability. That has nothing to do with money.
>
> The reason I'm assuming it does is that you're apparently concluding
> that you're not yourself part of the community. you're standing on
> the outside and not thinking that you yourself can change things.
> when you don't see something in the formal standard written and
> published over 10 years ago, you project the assumption (rightly or
> wrongly) that the community doesn't care and that nothing has
> happened since. take the bull by the horns. contact your vendor
> and ask. tell them what you would pay. get your friends to pony up
> money, too. i'm not saying pay for the whole thing UNLESS you find
> you're the only one asking. what I'm saying is that your fair share
> of the cost is
> x/y
> where
> x = cost of doing what you want
> y = number of people who want it enough to pay for it
It is really not about making somebody ("they") just magically fix it because
I want it. I was interested in current common practice.
As I have indicated I would have no trouble "fixing" whatever I feel needs
fixing, assuming I have the time and knowledge required. However since I am
still fairly new to CL, I would probably do a very lousy job of creating that
hypothetical "CLCL" I mentioned. In terms of learning CL, I am looking at
writing some useful applications *first*.
Taking what is already there and applying it to something I want is easier
than making a high-quality re-usable library. And the usefulness of said
application is not as much reduced by my (what I assume will be) suboptimal
code quality, as in the case of a useful library (because the latter by
definition requires a certain quality in order to be useful, while the
former is mostly dependent on the final end-user visible result).
> OR, if it's open source as you say, WRITE THE DOC yourself and give it to
> the vendor and say "Is this your intent for now and furture releases? If it
> is, maybe you could thus document it." and then go to the vendor you think
> that disagrees (causing non-portability) and tell them you care about
> portability and ask if they could compromise.
I could; but again I was probably do a lousy job for now given my lack of
CL experience.
(The best I can see myself doing until I have more CL experience is put together
some kind of informal list of "tips" for people in my position.)
> I don't have trouble with your claim that this needs to be done. I have
> trouble with your claim that no one cares. People DO care.
Again I would like to apologies if I gave this impression; it was not my intent.
> for having succeeded. People already know it, what they seek is a workable
> solution. Make one. Document something. Make your hobby-horse be getting
> everyone to adopt it, NOTWITHSTANDING the absence of a very cumbersome
> standards process to bless it. We don't need the blessing. We just need
> the accidental fact.
No reason why I won't try to do so in the future.
> No, i wasn't trying to make that point. I was trying to make the point that
> ERROR _is_ a documentation of every single condition that might arise.
>
> I'd prefer it if there were more fine grained names sometimes for the
> conditions that might get signaled, sure. But I diagree with the
> technical claim that we don't document what might get signaled. ERROR
> might get signaled. It might be called FILE-NOT-FOUND or
> NETWORK-INTERFACE-MISSING, but it's still ERROR. I'm not saying the
> problem you're having doesn't exist. I'm just saying that your
> on-and-off characterization of the error as "the error is not
> documented" is the wrong phrasing and is not helping your case, it's
> just confusing me into side-tracks of having to correct terminology.
>
>
> Writing
>
> (ERROR 'FILE-NOT-FOUND :NAME #P"/foo/bar")
>
> _is_ an implementation of "an error of type ERROR will be signaled."
But it's *mostly* useless implementation as compared to using a documented
more specific exception.
The problem is that most robust applications are not going to want to catch
*ALL* errors - other than to do some kind of emergency cleanup and logging the
occurrance as a likely software bug. Catching *ALL* errors because you know
the file creation or file reference might fail is not a good solution,
because any other errors that might get signalled as a result of bugs in
your own code (or code you call) will suddenly be treated as "file not
found". At best, this is confusing and difficult to debug after the fact. At
worst, it's disastrous.
> You might wish it said something more refined, but the problem is not
> not that the error isn't documented, it's that the error that is documented
> is not of an adequately specific type for you to allow you to distinguish
> it from other kinds of errors that you don't want to handle. This is a
> legitimate thing to want. It just needs to be spoken about properly as
> you ask for it.
This was exactly the point I was trying to make, and exemplify by the Java
comparison. Thank you for providing the short and disambiguous explanation
I should have used to begin with :)
> Your failure to use good error and type terminology makes it hard for
> me to answer you on-topic. And when I reply correcting your
> terminology, you think I'm saying I disagree with your cause, which I
> don't. I just can't talk about causes with incorrect terminology--it
> makes it appear I'm agreeing with false premises. [Sort of like the
> "have you stoppped beating your wife?" problem. You might or might
> not beat your wife, but if you don't, it's hard to have a discussion
> on the subject that begins with a false premise.]
Fair enough, and I certainly won't refuse admit that my phrasing and choice
of words is far from perfect.
>> I would be very interesting in doing so. Which site is that?
>
> http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/
>
> look for the 1990 and 2001 papers on conditions.
Thanks; I will have a look!
> IO-ERROR is there, I think. It's spelled STREAM-ERROR, though.
> I don't think that's your problem in the specific. That doesn't mean
> there aren't missing specific condition classes, I just don't think
> this is the one. And in some cases maybe it doesn't say to use STREAM-ERROR
> though I bet a lot of times you can.
I will look into STREAM-ERROR; I was not aware of it.
>> Come on. I am merely talking about documentation of the most obvious
>> error condition;
>
> No, you're assuming that these are obvious.
I fully accept that some of the stuff I would want now would not be at all so
obvious a number of years ago when this stuff was being hashed out.
> Keep in mind there was very little experience with conditions at the time.
> A lot of people rejected the condition system we have completely and I
> had to do a HUGE sale to the community that we should have ANYTHING. The
> condition system itself may seem obvious now but it was not then.
I'm curious; what was the propsed alternative (if any)? (Given that checking for
error return code is pretty much out if you are to maintain any kind of
Lispish style)
> The only implementation that more than just ERROR, that had any condition
> classes at all, was the Lisp Machine, and people kept saying it required
> special purpose implementations. I had to write a portable implementation
> and give it away to convince people. And even then they didn't believe it.
> I kept saying "JUST LOAD THE CODE. REALLY. IT WORKS." It took years of
> lobbying to get them to just load it and little by little they would trickle
> in with phone calls saying "Uh, I finally loaded your code. You're right,
> it doesn't take special hardware. Can we, uh, actually use that code?"
> And I'd say "of course". [See the original proposal and original
> implementation--actually, revision 18 of that, just to give you some idea
> of how many iterations it went through before adoption, at my web site.]
>
> And even then, when accepted into the standard, CLOS was also new. So
> no one was sure that [and this was a HUGE sticking point] that multiple
> inheritance was there for the long run. So the committee INSISTED that
> no pre-defined error condition could rely on multiple inheritance. All
> error classes we defined had to be ones that made sense in a single-inheritance
> system. So we couldn't install the "obvious" things like many file conditions
> because the only extant, working, tested implementation was Symbolics Genera,
> and it relied heavily on multiple inheritance and did not want the standard
> to break it, while other vendors didn't want to commit to multiple
> inheritance. "file not found", just to take a point, can happen when a
> network is down, as a temporary error. Or it can happen when the network
> is up becasue of a permanent error of the file just not being there. Both
> result in a file not being visible. It can also happen due to a directory
> not being present. And some of these make assumptions about host file
> systems, which implies agreeing on more details about pathnames than we may
> have specified. Signaling that a host is down was something some people
> wanted to do by specifying a host, which gets into whether a host is
> a representable object or just a string--some wanted one, some another. And
> that's another way to bog down a proposal. So there were legit points of
> disagreement. But don't call this a lack of caring. Call it a legitimate
> reason that there is not a standard.
This was a very interesting read; thank you. I think the above paragraphs
covered more about the origins of Common Lisp as a standard as it appears
today, than pretty much all material on CL that I have read.
Obviously I cannot disagree with or argue any of it.
> Propose a standard now and maybe people will adopt it WHETHER OR NOT
> you do it formally. Adoption won't come on comp.lang.lisp. It will come
> by your one-by-one convincing vendors to care. comp.lang.lisp may put you
> in touch with people who can help, but since "me, too" posts are discouraged
> here, mostly you'll find dissent, not support in this venue.
Point taken.
> Most people don't write portable programs. They write semi-portable.
> They write to one implementation. When they port, they add some #+/#-
> conditionals. They try to isolate this into macros. e.g.,
>
> (defmacro handling-sql-errors (&body forms)
> #+LispWorks ...
> #+Franz ....)
>
> Each time they port, they elaborate these a bit.
>
> It seems to me that MANY people when they encounter a porting issue
> will write to comp.lang.lisp saying "how do i...". That seems
> normal. Your post seemed, by contrast, to have been leading with a
> broad allegation/conclusion of "lack of caring", which seemed to me
> way off base. Which is why I reacted strongly. I think you just don't
> understand the issue of "obviousd".
Again - my apologies for coming off like that.
> Nor did any of us, by the way. In 1984, Steele published CLTL.
> In 1986, we all (the people who worked on CLTL) got together in Monterrey,
> California (a beautiful venue, btw) and had a meeting about whether there
> was anything that needed fixing. We found we had no way to "vote" because
> there were many new people there and no way to consolidate opinions. In the
> end, this is how we came to ANSI. But in the process, Steele had a page or
> two document labeled "obvious" or "non-controversial" or some such. Something
> on the order of magnitude of about 50 things, each a one-liner like
> "Add a function XOR which is like AND and OR but does the obvious thing."
> He was _sure_ that no one would object to these. Nearly every one was objected
> to by someone. And from this, we all learned a lot about how much we had
> in common.
>
> Note well again: This didn't mean no one cared about these issues. Most
> they did. But they wanted to address each in different ways.
>
> It's the issue of non-caring that I snagged on in your posts. The language
> cares a lot. The people care a lot. But consensus is hard to achieve in
> a diverse community where people's care has led to use, and where change,
> even change for the better, can break things.
Point also taken.
(This post is turning out to be pretty light on content, with me just agreeing...)
>> I abhore [sic] binary-only distributions and the problems
>> they create (practical problems, not some abstract ideological issue).
>
> I personally prefer not to look at source, even when it's there.
> I prefer to look at doc.
Even if I don't have any intention of looking at the source, typical
open source solutions tends to be more portable and less susceptible to
the "oh we (the platform people) changed the version of library X and
thus application Y (the binary distributino) was broken on this
platform for 5 months because it happened at a poor time in the
application's release cycle" syndrome.
(E.g., the mess that was some of Sun's releases of the JDK for Linux,
inspite of the resources Sun has at its disposal.)
> In your world, where people give you stuff for free, I thought you
> were supposed to contribute the doc that was missing, as your
> contribution to the whole sharing thing. Or you contract a freeware
> maintainer to add the doc that will then be free for others. Maybe I
> misunderstand the social contract of freeware, but I thought that was
> how it worked.
In the broadest of sense, sure. But for a specific situation there are
any number of reasons why a certain person X cannot contribyte Y to Z
even though said person would like to see Y in Z.\
> By the way, again to help you with the history, CL was standardized
> before the only operating systems in the world were linux, windows and
> pc. We planned for about two dozen operating systems, all with
> radically different file systems. This made it hard to get agreement
> too. Maybe some agreement would be easier now.
Absolutely. My comment about portability between OS:es above was mostly
in response to the pay-the-vendor-or-stop-complaining argument that I
*thought* you were making, but now realize you were not.
[ again, a lot snipped that probably deserve insightful answers,
but unfortunately I'm not up to the task ]
--
/ Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB
PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller <··············@infidyne.com>'
Key retrieval: Send an E-Mail to ·········@scode.org
E-Mail: ··············@infidyne.com Web: http://www.scode.org
<······@nhplace.com> wrote:
> First, SBCL is itself harming the industry by catering to the notion that you
> don't have to pay to acquire something.
Thanks, we aim to please.
--
Juho Snellman
"Premature profiling is the root of all evil."
From: Edi Weitz
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ubr81hbo3.fsf@agharta.de>
On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 17:33:00 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> wrote:
> And every single person who GIVES AWAY free software in the world
> should think about how they bring down the price of software because
> now the world thinks it should get everything FOR FREE.
Yeah, but it takes two to tango, right? I mean, why do tightwads like
you use free software like Emacs and Gnus instead of buying a decent
commercial newsreader? If you'd put your money where your mouth is
you could help dimishing the market for those evil open source guys
until it finally disappears.
Cheers,
Edi.
PS: Nah, I don't really want to discuss this stuff. Just thought I'd
play smart ass.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ull756t98.fsf@nhplace.com>
Edi Weitz <········@agharta.de> writes:
> On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 17:33:00 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> wrote:
>
> > And every single person who GIVES AWAY free software in the world
> > should think about how they bring down the price of software because
> > now the world thinks it should get everything FOR FREE.
>
> Yeah, but it takes two to tango, right? I mean, why do tightwads like
> you use free software like Emacs and Gnus instead of buying a decent
> commercial newsreader? If you'd put your money where your mouth is
> you could help dimishing the market for those evil open source guys
> until it finally disappears.
I use Eudora, and pay money for it, but it has no associated mail reader
(or didn't last I checked... alas)
I also have paid for Microsoft Office, which has a commercial mail reader.
I just don't think it is as good as Emacs.
But none of that is relevant. The real pain of free software is that one
can't afford NOT to use it. By driving down the prices people can charge,
one has no more margin left on their products to buy commercial software!
I'd prefer to pay for software and to pass that cost through to people buying
mine, but it doesn't work that way. If I do that, I sell even less software
because myt prices are too high.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> I use Eudora, and pay money for it, but it has no associated mail reader
> (or didn't last I checked... alas)
Wasn't Eudora a mail program originally? That's what I remember
anyways.
> But none of that is relevant. The real pain of free software is that one
> can't afford NOT to use it. By driving down the prices people can charge,
> one has no more margin left on their products to buy commercial software!
It will be interesting to see, how Opera (.com, the browser
company) will fare, now with Firefox around, and the Mac having a
good browser out of the box.
> I'd prefer to pay for software and to pass that cost through to people buying
> mine, but it doesn't work that way. If I do that, I sell even less software
> because myt prices are too high.
I think nice small applications (like a really good newsreader for
the Mac) would be worth $10-20 for most people. It depends how
much you want to make on software, and how many customers you can get.
Consulting or coding on contract might be the best thing to do in
the future. There will always be demand for custom software (I
hope), and with good open tools the developing costs might be reduced.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uhdhs4wz0.fsf@nhplace.com>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> Consulting or coding on contract might be the best thing to do in the
> future. There will always be demand for custom software (I hope), and
> with good open tools the developing costs might be reduced.
This is like saying to someone who wants to be a professional opera
singer "not to worry--there will always be advertising companies
wanting someone to belt out their stupid jingles, and there will
always be restaurants wanting to hire both the occasional live singer
or someone to record muzack for them". That's great for people who
find that fulfilling, but it misses the point. I'm not going to belabor
the point. I've done that many times. I just want to say that this
remark above misses it.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>Consulting or coding on contract might be the best thing to do in the
>>future. There will always be demand for custom software (I hope), and
>>with good open tools the developing costs might be reduced.
>
>
> This is like saying to someone who wants to be a professional opera
> singer "not to worry--there will always be advertising companies
> wanting someone to belt out their stupid jingles, and there will
> always be restaurants wanting to hire both the occasional live singer
> or someone to record muzack for them". That's great for people who
> find that fulfilling, but it misses the point. I'm not going to belabor
> the point. I've done that many times. I just want to say that this
> remark above misses it.
I think that's not really a fitting comparison. People don't go
to operas because it's not their kind of music. Reducing the cost
of opera tickets wouldn't change this significantly.
I was talking about reducing the costs of developing software
(through good tools), so that custom software is more affordable.
I think with custom software prices ARE the determining factor,
it's why people often choose to buy instead of build.
So I'm not saying there will always be crappy jobs for them; I'm
saying with lower cost there will be more good clients, too,
because most clients would rather build than buy, if it were
affordable. Most COTS software sucks quite badly, after all, and
forces organizations to adapt to the software, not vice versa.
Maybe these kind of programming jobs are what you would consider
muzack-like, but at least they're jobs. Programmers are free to
find other ways to earn money if they can. I definitely don't
intend to work in some other field, just because (you imply?)
there is no hope for programmers.
About you having belabored that point many times: something on
your website, or something specific I could google for?
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote on Wed, 27 Apr 2005:
>>>Consulting or coding on contract might be the best thing to do in the
>>>future.
> Kent M Pitman wrote:
>> That's great for people who find that fulfilling, but it misses the point.
>> I'm not going to belabor the point. I've done that many times.
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote on Wed, 27 Apr 2005:
> Maybe these kind of programming jobs are what you would consider muzack-like,
> but at least they're jobs. Programmers are free to find other ways to earn
> money if they can.
> About you having belabored that point many times: something on your website,
> or something specific I could google for?
Kent has written many times in the past (on comp.lang.lisp, among other places)
about some negative consequences of the free software movement.
Perhaps Kent will answer himself, but just for kicks let me put some words
in his mouth:
Kent wants to design new complex software, implement it, and sell it for a
premium price. Before the rise of free software, this was a feasible business
model, and would result in good wages for the programmer. These days, Kent
has to compete with free software offerings. Even if Kent's software is 10-20%
better on some metric, he won't find enough customers at a high enough price
to pay for his development. Whereas, before free software, the competitive
software was produced by organizations that had to recoup their costs, and
Kent could earn a nice living producing higher quality software for slightly
higher prices.
Kent is lamenting the fact that he can no longer do the kind of work that he
used to be able to do. Your response is that there are different jobs he
could do that also involve programming. You see how you are talking past him?
His complaint is that he wants to continue doing his old programming job,
and he (partially) blames free software for eliminating that job. You've
addressed neither his lack of opportunity to do the kind of programming he
wants, nor even his inference that free software is to blame.
So Kent had little to respond to you, because your comments didn't really
address his topic.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's
life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if
there are men on base. -- Dave Barry
Don Geddis wrote:
> Kent wants to design new complex software, implement it, and sell it for a
> premium price. Before the rise of free software, this was a feasible business
> model, and would result in good wages for the programmer. These days, Kent
> has to compete with free software offerings. Even if Kent's software is 10-20%
> better on some metric, he won't find enough customers at a high enough price
> to pay for his development. Whereas, before free software, the competitive
> software was produced by organizations that had to recoup their costs, and
> Kent could earn a nice living producing higher quality software for slightly
> higher prices.
I know. I'd also like to pursue the same kind of business
someday, and I share your feelings about open-source lowering the
prices of software, so that this business model is much harder today.
But hey, you can't change the world. As I wrote, it will be
interesting how a company like Opera will fare in the browser
market. And I also say again, that making tools better and
cheaper, there might be a possibility to still compete with
open-source.
> Kent is lamenting the fact that he can no longer do the kind of work that he
> used to be able to do. Your response is that there are different jobs he
> could do that also involve programming. You see how you are talking past him?
I didn't know what plans Kent had, so talking past him wasn't
intentional. I wrote "Consulting or coding on contract might be
the best thing to do in the future." in the sense that you create
software for money. Unlike the writing first and trying to sell,
you already made the sale (of your expertise) and then write the
software. I agree that it's not that fulfilling, but maybe I
won't be able to choose if I want a programming job.
> His complaint is that he wants to continue doing his old programming job,
> and he (partially) blames free software for eliminating that job. You've
> addressed neither his lack of opportunity to do the kind of programming he
> wants, nor even his inference that free software is to blame.
There's still lots of commercial software around that people pay
for, but I agree that the costs for an individual to compete with
open-source are sadly quite high.
In that sense we should even be thankful that the programmer
hordes don't use Lisp, so that we have a better amplifier for our
programming power then they do. Again: better tools lower the
cost of development, so competing is easier (either by lowering
the sale price, or by writing software that's much better than
theirs).
> So Kent had little to respond to you, because your comments didn't really
> address his topic.
True, because I didn't really know what his situation is. I share
the feelings, but there's nothing I can do about it, so I just
take it for granted...
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> But hey, you can't change the world.
I observe many things about the world that change. I would think
that you do too. So, I don't think you mean to say the world
doesn't change.
Do you mean to say that you can't control how the world changes?
--jon
Jon Boone wrote:
> I observe many things about the world that change. I would think
> that you do too. So, I don't think you mean to say the world
> doesn't change.
It certainly does change, but it's hard to control that on your own.
> Do you mean to say that you can't control how the world changes?
Yes. I think there so much noise out there that talking usually
doesn't change anything. Just like demonstrations never do
anything, and the people doing them should rather make money in
that time and use that for some *real* changes.
I'm more for living my life the way I think is right, and then
hoping people will catch on.
(still hoping I might get rich someday, so I can actually have
more influence)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ur7gv8wmr.fsf@nhplace.com>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> But hey, you can't change the world.
[Why do people say phrases like this as if they were undeniably true without
questioning the self-fulfilling prophecies they contain?]
No, but you can tell people when the world is not going how it should
be and you can yourself choose a path compatible with what you'd like.
There's a difference between failing to recognize the limits of your
power and failing to recognize the need to exercise the power you do
have. None of us can elect a president, but we can be sure that if we
don't go to the voting booth, the one we want will not get elected on
his own. You've got to behave as if your part matters.
So when I see things going awry, I speak and behave in ways intended
to make an effect.
Not to change the subject utterly, but there's a lot about modern
morality that has gone awry. I'm not recommending a return to
Victorian values, but I do think that Robert Reich hits in on the nose
in his recent "Reason: Why Liberals will win the Battle for America"
when he points out that while he doesn't agree with the Republicans
about their choice of values, he thinks they are on the mark in at
least talking about values. And that people ought not confuse a
society of "tolerance" with a society of "accepting anything". Even
in a tolerant society, there needs to be a difference between the
acceptable and the unacceptable, the desirable and the undesirable.
Otherwise, things will just drift unchecked in ways no one wants.
> > So Kent had little to respond to you, because your comments didn't really
> > address his topic.
>
> True, because I didn't really know what his situation is. I share the
> feelings, but there's nothing I can do about it, so I just take it for
> granted...
Nonsense. You can't fix the problem yourself, but you can have an incremental
effect. There is something you can do. When someone offers you something
for free, offer to pay them for the value you get. Tell them to charge
people rather than give away value.
I had a neighbor who used to cut my lawn for free sometimes when he was out.
I would still pay him. I told him if he wanted he could save the money and
buy back a service from me sometime. But having this done in money, and not
in "traded favors", means he can buy food or something else instead of my
personal services if he chooses. That's all money is--a reminder of good
deeds done in some form that allows you to trade with people other than the
one who did you the service or you did the service for.
When someone asks something free of you, ask a reasonable price.
There's nothing wrong with getting paid. There's nothing wrong with
having money. And don't kid yourself, there are times in your life
when you'll need it.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> So when I see things going awry, I speak and behave in ways intended
> to make an effect.
Sure, better than not doing that.
> Not to change the subject utterly, but there's a lot about modern
> morality that has gone awry. I'm not recommending a return to
> Victorian values, but I do think that Robert Reich hits in on the nose
> in his recent "Reason: Why Liberals will win the Battle for America"
> when he points out that while he doesn't agree with the Republicans
> about their choice of values, he thinks they are on the mark in at
> least talking about values. And that people ought not confuse a
> society of "tolerance" with a society of "accepting anything". Even
> in a tolerant society, there needs to be a difference between the
> acceptable and the unacceptable, the desirable and the undesirable.
> Otherwise, things will just drift unchecked in ways no one wants.
Unfortunately people in our modern democracy don't care about
anything anymore (how many people go vote?). Well, except that
new (stupid) morality wave from those who call themselves
neo"conservatives". We ought to have positive values (honesty,
reliability, being on time, having a consistent opinion...),
instead of all this crap about saying that everyone who isn't 100%
pro-life or for the war, or against stem cell research is a bad
person. A tolerant government wouldn't constantly tell people
what's good or bad. We have churches and/or a common sense for that.
I hope liberals will make some ground in the US, but only because
there's way too many people almost starving and because I hope the
neoconses will make way for good old cons (hehe; maybe the world
needs garbage collection). But I'm only a libertarian minority...
> Nonsense. You can't fix the problem yourself, but you can have an incremental
> effect. There is something you can do. When someone offers you something
> for free, offer to pay them for the value you get. Tell them to charge
> people rather than give away value.
In my dorm usually fixing PCs involves getting a dinner cooked :)
I don't participate in that anymore, though; too much work/time
for the price, IMHO.
> When someone asks something free of you, ask a reasonable price.
Good idea. Even micropayments might make some sense. Among
friends it's kind of weird to ask for money though, since we
usually invite each other for a beer or two anyway.
> There's nothing wrong with getting paid. There's nothing wrong with
> having money. And don't kid yourself, there are times in your life
> when you'll need it.
I never said anything against money, did I?
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Not to change the subject utterly, but there's a lot about modern
> morality that has gone awry. I'm not recommending a return to
> Victorian values, but I do think that Robert Reich hits in on the
> nose in his recent "Reason: Why Liberals will win the Battle for
> America" when he points out that while he doesn't agree with the
> Republicans about their choice of values, he thinks they are on the
> mark in at least talking about values. And that people ought not
> confuse a society of "tolerance" with a society of "accepting
> anything". Even in a tolerant society, there needs to be a
> difference between the acceptable and the unacceptable, the
> desirable and the undesirable. Otherwise, things will just drift
> unchecked in ways no one wants.
Robert Reich was interviewed by a BBC documentary called The Century of
Self. He helped explain why our bonds of community are much weaker than
before.
http://www.thecorporation.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=587
They claim that we've transitioned to a free market morality, every man
for herself; and politicians now pander to a small bloc of swing
voters.
> Nonsense. You can't fix the problem yourself, but you can have an
> incremental effect. There is something you can do. When someone
> offers you something for free, offer to pay them for the value you
> get. Tell them to charge people rather than give away value.
I'm curious what you think of technology automating away many
manufacturing jobs, destabilizing their wages and pushing them to
service jobs. This is not a "drive-by" question; I am honestly curious.
> When someone asks something free of you, ask a reasonable price.
>
> There's nothing wrong with getting paid. There's nothing wrong
> with having money. And don't kid yourself, there are times in
> your life when you'll need it.
True, money is only lubrication, to match up consumers and producers.
However, we seem to have the Java of monetary systems. And the
mechanism of controlling money appears outside our democratic control.
The function of the taxpayer has been to heavily subsidize research.
But not to subsidize production. If we lived in a serious democracy
where the citizenry did more than poke a chad every 4 years, taxpayers
would likely sponsor production of free software. Just as we provide
stable subsidies for (say) Lockheed-Martin to administer parking meters
and welfare-to-work programs.
Changing the subject, Jans Aasman of Franz explained this weekend that
Franz has been growing and increasingly able to utilize its engineering
department. I suspect free software has been BENEFICIAL to Franz's
business model. At least I have seen remarkably few people discuss this
fundamental issue seriously.
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> wrote on 28 Apr 2005 06:4:
> a BBC documentary called The Century of Self [...]
> They claim that we've transitioned to a free market morality, every man
> for herself; and politicians now pander to a small bloc of swing voters.
Perhaps surprisingly, that last "obvious" fact was decidedly not true in
the more recent US Presidential election. As you suggest, in almost all
elections the candidates pander to the swing voters at the end, who tend
to be "moderate" (which is why they're undecided).
In this election, the issues were so polarizing that most voters made up their
minds long ago, and wouldn't change them. There were very few true swing
voters available to pander to.
The Republicans led the innovative new idea to _ignore_ the swing voters,
and instead concentrate on turning out the base of "already decided" voters.
Turns out there were a lot more people who supported each candidate, but
usually just didn't bother to vote, then people who were truly undecided.
It was a successful election strategy for Bush/Rove, but it naturally led
to a feeling of divisiveness in the US, since neither candidate was trying
very hard to appeal to the "average voter", but instead spent most of their
energy appealing only to their own side. That structure highlights differences
rather than similarities.
Anyway, I just found it amusing that your conclusion of politicians
pandering to "a small bloc of swing voters" was not true in the last
major US election.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
Don Geddis wrote:
> "Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> wrote on 28 Apr 2005
06:4:
> > a BBC documentary called The Century of Self [...]
> > They claim that we've transitioned to a free market morality,
> > every man for herself; and politicians now pander to a small
> > bloc of swing voters.
>
> Anyway, I just found it amusing that your conclusion of politicians
> pandering to "a small bloc of swing voters" was not true in the last
> major US election.
It is not my personal conclusion. If you look up a few lines, I wrote
"They claim..." And the documentary was in 2002. We are focussing on
half a sentence I wrote in some haste.
You're free to watch the documentary and explore further; but just like
Lisp, I'm sure it's not to everyone's interest.
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Robert Reich was interviewed by a BBC documentary called The Century of
> Self. He helped explain why our bonds of community are much weaker than
> before.
> http://www.thecorporation.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=587
>
> They claim that we've transitioned to a free market morality, every man
> for herself; and politicians now pander to a small bloc of swing
> voters.
It's everybody for themselves because money is harder to make,
because we divide people on religious issues (in the US). Where
these things aren't an issue, there usually is a community,
despite the free market being everywhere.
>>Nonsense. You can't fix the problem yourself, but you can have an
>>incremental effect. There is something you can do. When someone
>>offers you something for free, offer to pay them for the value you
>>get. Tell them to charge people rather than give away value.
>
>
> I'm curious what you think of technology automating away many
> manufacturing jobs, destabilizing their wages and pushing them to
> service jobs. This is not a "drive-by" question; I am honestly curious.
I think it's normal. It has happened for two centuries now, with
our standard of living rising, and new kinds of jobs coming up all
the time. The trend is to services, right. That's doesn't have
to be bad, though. It's not all just waitresses and people in
hotel elevators ;)
> True, money is only lubrication, to match up consumers and producers.
> However, we seem to have the Java of monetary systems. And the
> mechanism of controlling money appears outside our democratic control.
It's the unit of trade. I don't know too much about monetary
systems or what you mean. I rather think that our political
systems are just wrong (in the US: not enough social security, and
too much stuff in the government; in Europe: waaaay too much stuff
in the government).
When stupid regulations go away (which work like resistors in
electric circuits), micromarkets can appear everywhere, which is
good. I think there are probably lots of business models that are
just not viable now.
> The function of the taxpayer has been to heavily subsidize research.
But why is this right or wrong? Historically I think it's been a
function of the cold war, that the "West" needed guaranteed money
flow into research to strengthen the military. A market can't
guarantee anything, in contrast. Now that the war is over, I'm
not sure if government funding is a good idea. Maybe it distorts
the market for private research.
OTOH it's a good idea to make all state-funded research open for
everybody. In that case tax-funding (by everybody) isn't
necessarily bad.
> But not to subsidize production. If we lived in a serious democracy
> where the citizenry did more than poke a chad every 4 years, taxpayers
> would likely sponsor production of free software. Just as we provide
> stable subsidies for (say) Lockheed-Martin to administer parking meters
> and welfare-to-work programs.
What does the poorness of modern democracy have to do with
sponsoring free software? I don't quite follow. I don't think a
communism-like general funding for whatever software the state (or
the FSF) deems appropriate is good. A market is a better alternative.
> Changing the subject, Jans Aasman of Franz explained this weekend that
> Franz has been growing and increasingly able to utilize its engineering
> department. I suspect free software has been BENEFICIAL to Franz's
> business model. At least I have seen remarkably few people discuss this
> fundamental issue seriously.
In what way does Franz profit in any way from open-source? Don't
they sell Allegro for money, and maybe services and consulting for
it? This seems to me like saying MS profits from open-source.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uy8b2ftb9.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> This seems to me like saying MS profits from open-source.
FOSS helps to ensure that programmers are poor enough that they
can't compete with the resources that Microsoft brings to bear.
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>In what way does Franz profit in any way from open-source? Don't they
>sell Allegro for money, and maybe services and consulting for it?
I would think that at least some people at Franz are also using free
software to do their work. How else would they be able to make their
product for Linux and FreeBSD?
>This seems to me like saying MS profits from open-source.
Of course they do. Hotmail runs on a FreeBSD server farm, they have
been using free software systems (or derived-from free software) for
their backend web servers for the microsoft.com domain at some time (a
couple years ago you could for some time directly telnet onto their
web servers and it came up with a BSDI login prompt...) And you don't
think that within MS every employee uses exclusively software that has
either been bought from a 3rd party or has been developed in-house?
Besides, there's plenty open-source software also for Windows, which
indirectly helps the OS vendor aswell by contributing to the
usefulness of the system for their customers.
mkb.
Matthias Buelow wrote:
>>This seems to me like saying MS profits from open-source.
>
>
> Of course they do. Hotmail runs on a FreeBSD server farm, they have
Actually some time ago MS migrated Hotmail to Win2000. It was a
lot of work :)
> been using free software systems (or derived-from free software) for
> their backend web servers for the microsoft.com domain at some time (a
> couple years ago you could for some time directly telnet onto their
> web servers and it came up with a BSDI login prompt...) And you don't
Cool :)
Although BSDI is a commercial BSD.
> think that within MS every employee uses exclusively software that has
> either been bought from a 3rd party or has been developed in-house?
> Besides, there's plenty open-source software also for Windows, which
> indirectly helps the OS vendor aswell by contributing to the
> usefulness of the system for their customers.
Maybe. There are people who say that open-source available for
Windows keeps people from switching to Linux.
For most people I know the issue seems to be games, though. For
me it was multimedia, but fortunately a Mac can do both Unix and
multimedia.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>Actually some time ago MS migrated Hotmail to Win2000. It was a lot
>of work :)
When was that? I remember some talk about a _failed_ attempt to move
to W2K around 2000. Maybe they have succeeded in the meantime but
that's not my latest information.
>> couple years ago you could for some time directly telnet onto their
>> web servers and it came up with a BSDI login prompt...) And you don't
>Cool :)
>Although BSDI is a commercial BSD.
It is (was? -- the company went belly up) derived from the free,
unencumbered 4.4BSD-Lite2 distribution (as are the other modern BSDs).
mkb.
Matthias Buelow wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>Actually some time ago MS migrated Hotmail to Win2000. It was a lot
>>of work :)
>
>
> When was that? I remember some talk about a _failed_ attempt to move
> to W2K around 2000. Maybe they have succeeded in the meantime but
> that's not my latest information.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/evaluation/casestudies/hotmail.asp
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>> When was that? I remember some talk about a _failed_ attempt to move
>> to W2K around 2000. Maybe they have succeeded in the meantime but
>> that's not my latest information.
>
>http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/evaluation/casestudies/hotmail.asp
Yes... that's maybe what they wished for, or what they wanted to do.
The above article is from February 2001. From December, 2001 is the
following Register article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/12/12/microsoft_hotmail_still_runs/
My latest knowledge is that today (2005) Hotmail still runs FreeBSD on
its backend servers. I've never seen anyone claim anything different
so far.
You should remember that when MS was running BSDI on its backend
servers for microsoft.com, they were using W2K as frontend servers.
They're probably doing exactly the same with Hotmail now aswell.
Do you really believe _anything_ that comes out of Microsoft's
marketing department?
mkb.
>>>>> "TJG" == Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
TJG> [...] If we lived in a
TJG> serious democracy where the citizenry did more than poke a
TJG> chad every 4 years, taxpayers would likely sponsor production
TJG> of free software. [...]
Donations to FSF or SPI etc. _are_ tax-deductible in the US. I am
unsure what the 'serious democracy' locution means, but I imagine a
good sense of the headcount could be arrived at by looking at how many
people donated to these non-profits. For those who believe these
subsidies are a good idea, he obvious thing to do would be to convince
more people to donate and thus indirectly cause others (who don't want
to or care to pay) to pay. A probable side benefit of this scheme,
for people who like reading KMP's prose, would be provoking him to
explain to us why he'd prefer getting paid for the work he does by the
ones who actually buy it than through some allocation scheme that
effectively decouples producers from consumers. (Hmm or maybe not?
Perhaps I am being presumptuous?)
cheers,
BM
Bulent Murtezaoglu wrote:
> >>>>> "TJG" == Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> TJG> [...] If we lived in a
> TJG> serious democracy where the citizenry did more than poke a
> TJG> chad every 4 years, taxpayers would likely sponsor
> TJG> production of free software. [...]
>
> Donations to FSF or SPI etc. _are_ tax-deductible in the US. I am
> unsure what the 'serious democracy' locution means,
Those who study the founding of America know that we don't have a
democracy, though there are democratic principles at work. Respectfully
speaking, I won't say any more on this because this is flamewar
material and people who really care have the entire internet to learn
further.
The free software problem is a deep one, and Kent is correct in
pointing out some of the problems. In fact, there are parallels with
manufacturing industries. While I spoke in global terms, I do not think
there is a central global solution. Nor is the solution a simple or
obvious master stroke.
Just as hundreds of people have wasted unbelievable amounts of time
debating Lisp vs. static typechecking, I do not want to reduce this to
X vs. Y. "He is wrong" vs. "He is right."
Paul Foley wrote:
> On 28 Apr 2005 06:44:24 -0700, Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> > Robert Reich was interviewed by a BBC documentary called The
> > Century of Self. He helped explain why our bonds of
> > community are much weaker than before.
> > http://www.thecorporation.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=587
>
> > They claim that we've transitioned to a free market morality,
> > every man for herself; and politicians now pander to a small
> > bloc of swing voters.
>
> What you're describing is "democratic morality" -- the polar
> opposite of "free market morality". [I guess the closest thing
> you'd find to a true "free market morality" would be in the
> relatively free-market 19th century -- precisely the time
> you're claiming our "bonds of community" are now weaker than!]
>
> Highly recommended reading on the same theme: Hans-Hermann Hoppe's
> _Democracy: The God that Failed_
> (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765808684 -- introduction
> online at http://www.mises.org/hoppeintro.asp)
Paul, we talked privately about this once.
I retract my last few paragraphs in my reply to Kent. It was foolish to
bring up a line of discussion which predictably would result in
pie-in-the-sky abstract debate. If you and I agree that our monetary
system is messed up, no matter what either of us think is the cause,
that is sufficient. In the same way, I retract and regret every single
time I've taken part in a static vs. dynamic typechecking debate.
I will not mention further any ideology that might hold anyone back
from viewing this problem thoughtfully.
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u3bta7pus.fsf@nhplace.com>
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> Just as hundreds of people have wasted unbelievable amounts of time
> debating Lisp vs. static typechecking, I do not want to reduce this to
> X vs. Y. "He is wrong" vs. "He is right."
Absolutely.
I have not said that free software is bad. I have said that it is
a problem, and certainly NOT a panacea.
The problem I have with it is that people assume that anything they write
for free is automatically "good". This is like the church telling people
that any time they deny an abortion to a young girl, they have "enabled"
life. It simply isn't as simple as that. Sometimes abortions are safer
medically than bearing a baby. Sometimes people denied medical abortions
will resort to coathangers and die themselves in addition. And sometimes
unwanted babies will grow up to be unwanted by society, and will work against
rather than for society, perhaps even to stealing and killing for their own
survival. The equation is simply not that simple. Even the present battle
in the US over notification is not as cut and dried as some would have it be.
Some parents, when notified, will beat their children and do worse to them
than anything they were planning to do themselves.
I raise this issue not just because it's bugging me on a daily basis
as I sometimes listen to C-SPAN in background while I work, but also
because it highlights the clear difference between "dogma" (the blind
blessing of a tool's use) and "wisdom" (the blessing of a reasoned
thought process).
I have often said that the strange thing about wisdom is that two
people, applying reasoned thought, can reach differing outcomes. (I
suppose that could even go so far as to say that one wise person could
advocate blind creation of free software even though I, trying perhaps
arrogantly to claim I have a bit of wisdom on this issue, think the
opposite.) But really what I mean is that on any given occasion, one
must evaluate the consequences of free software. It is a tool.
Has it done good? I think it has. In some cases. It has given
Microsoft a run for its money, and that may be good not because
Microsoft is evil per se, but because there is a danger in any
overlarge company getting too comfortable. And there aren't many
challengers to Microsoft. The flip side, of course, is that there
soon won't be many challengers to Linux because the investment has
reached such a critical mass that competing with it is just too
expensive. And Postgres is another win for the free software
community, because database technology should have been integrated
tightly into languages and systems early on in computer science, and
was probably locked out by some quasi-monopolies on database
technology for a long time holding db technology too high. It should
have come down in price over time by natural market forces, but
didn't.
But on the other hend, free software has been a nightmare. The giving away
of small tools means that there isn't a nice market for small wares.
Rather, it means every time anyone comes out with anything that took only
modest investment and they want to sell for an appropriately modest price,
there is some thoughtless free software sniper ready to say "I'll save the
world from even that modest price by making a version of that which is free."
This means the person who did the original thing is wasting his time, and
it has been catastrophic to the market.
The remarkable thing is that there have been no lawsuits, but probably
because this is a war between poor people making each other poorer, and no
one can afford a lawyer.
In International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918),
the Associated Press sought (and I think got) relief when they were sending
people abroad to cover the war and then as soon as the results came back,
other news services (presumably International News Service in particular)
were republishing the results without having to invest in having a reporter
overseas. (I dredged up the URL and someone can doublecheck my memory, but
I don't have time to read it and check myself.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=248&invol=215
) The critical issues, as I recall anyway, were: (1) that ordinarily, news
enjoys not much copyright protection because it is "truth" and not "literary".
The truer something is, the less it has copyright hold. I recall that history
texts have more trouble getting copyright protection than other works, for
example, because there's a virtue in not having you rewrite the truth just
to get another wording that is copyright free, because this would cause drift.
But the problem on the other side was that in certain cases, like this, where
truth is expensive to obtain, saying that anyone can just copy it the instant
it is made could lead to a catastrophic failure of the market, and no one would
send reporters to cover wars because it wasn't economically worth it.
I'm quite surprised that people haven't made similar cases about free
software since the case seems structurally related. Code is not literary,
yet it takes time to organize it into libraries and funciton calls, and to
find what functions work well with others; as soon as you publish a spec,
though, anyone can copy it without doing this work. If you publish good doc,
it will tell you even about the hard cases and tricky bugs to avoid and again
save another implementor time. The result being that it is a disincentive
to doing the initial work in the first place.
Note I don't mean a disincentive to produce free software. But the
whole IP protection thing in the Constitution, too, seems to me to be
about promoting business, not busy-ness.
From: Thomas A. Russ
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ymik6mmwxk5.fsf@sevak.isi.edu>
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> I'm quite surprised that people haven't made similar cases about free
> software since the case seems structurally related. Code is not literary,
> yet it takes time to organize it into libraries and funciton calls, and to
> find what functions work well with others; as soon as you publish a spec,
> though, anyone can copy it without doing this work. If you publish good doc,
> it will tell you even about the hard cases and tricky bugs to avoid and again
> save another implementor time. The result being that it is a disincentive
> to doing the initial work in the first place.
Well, isn't this essentially an argument in favor of software patents?
They protect precisely the sort of thing that is expressed in that paragraph.
--
Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ud5se8xu1.fsf@nhplace.com>
···@sevak.isi.edu (Thomas A. Russ) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
>
> > I'm quite surprised that people haven't made similar cases about
> > free software since the case seems structurally related. Code is
> > not literary, yet it takes time to organize it into libraries and
> > funciton calls, and to find what functions work well with others;
> > as soon as you publish a spec, though, anyone can copy it without
> > doing this work. If you publish good doc, it will tell you even
> > about the hard cases and tricky bugs to avoid and again save
> > another implementor time. The result being that it is a
> > disincentive to doing the initial work in the first place.
>
> Well, isn't this essentially an argument in favor of software patents?
>
> They protect precisely the sort of thing that is expressed in that
> paragraph.
I'll think on that. I see where you're going but something seems
wrong about that. I think the main reason is that patents, unlike
copyrights, are expensive and require explicit bookkeeping and persist
for too long. So they're too heavyweight.
(Not that I don't think most software patents are inappropriate and
too heavyweight, too, btw. I believe strongly in software copyrights,
but don't think software patents are a good idea in most cases. I
think they have mostly hindered, rather than helped, the case. One
main problem with patents is "independent derivation" is an
infringement rather than a proof that the thing patented was "obvious"
and never should have been given a patent in the first place.)
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> think they have mostly hindered, rather than helped, the case. One
> main problem with patents is "independent derivation" is an
> infringement rather than a proof that the thing patented was "obvious"
> and never should have been given a patent in the first place.)
Well, a century ago patent offices could afford to hire bright staff
members like a guy named Albert Einstein :)
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> wrote on Thu, 28 Apr 2005:
> I believe strongly in software copyrights, but don't think software patents
> are a good idea in most cases. I think they have mostly hindered, rather
> than helped, the case.
I agree completely, and I've been involved in software patent cases on both
sides. I've rarely seen a situation where the world is better (for the
public) because of a granting of a software patent. Perhaps RSA encryption.
Almost everybody I know files for software patents either with the intent of
becoming a litigation company (which is a non-productive tax on the economy),
as a defense against the possibility of accidentally infringing someone
else's patents, or just as a "resume builder" to attempt to impress future
employers/investors.
Patents are intended to encourage innovation, and the widespread dissemination
of the innovations. But in the software field, I've almost never seen that
effect.
> One main problem with patents is "independent derivation" is an
> infringement rather than a proof that the thing patented was "obvious" and
> never should have been given a patent in the first place.
I agree again that this is a major error with the design of the patent system.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means
just what I choose it to mean---neither more nor less."
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> But on the other hend, free software has been a nightmare. The giving away
> of small tools means that there isn't a nice market for small wares.
There are probably still markets for small wares, but you may not be
interested in them. An example is the availability of many
closed-source, shareware/commercial applications and tools for the
Palm OS PDA operating system. Registration fees are up to about a few
tens of $.
Some good and popular programs have lots of registered users, who are
often happy to compensate with money the authors for their work.
Here is a popular site for Palm OS software:
PalmGear.com
http://www.palmgear.com
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: Timothy Moore
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <wdroebx6dmk.fsf@cleo.labri.fr>
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> But on the other hend, free software has been a nightmare. The giving away
> of small tools means that there isn't a nice market for small wares.
> Rather, it means every time anyone comes out with anything that took only
> modest investment and they want to sell for an appropriately modest price,
> there is some thoughtless free software sniper ready to say "I'll save the
> world from even that modest price by making a version of that which is free."
> This means the person who did the original thing is wasting his time, and
> it has been catastrophic to the market.
I'm not familiar with this phenomenon. Can you give one example of it?
Tim
>>>>> "TJG" == Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
TJG> [...] If we lived in a serious democracy where the citizenry
TJG> did more than poke a chad every 4 years, taxpayers would
TJG> likely sponsor production of free software. [...]
BM> Donations to FSF or SPI etc. _are_ tax-deductible in the US. I
BM> am unsure what the 'serious democracy' locution means,
TJG> Those who study the founding of America know that we don't
TJG> have a democracy, though there are democratic principles at
TJG> work. [...]
Oh I believe I do more or less understand what the founders intended
over there, what I was unclear on is the nature of the proposed
replacement as it pertains to public funding for software. Arguably
OT here, but is that still flamewar material?
cheers,
BM
Bulent Murtezaoglu wrote:
> BM> Donations to FSF or SPI etc. _are_ tax-deductible in the US.
> BM> I am unsure what the 'serious democracy' locution means,
>
> TJG> Those who study the founding of America know that we don't
> TJG> have a democracy, though there are democratic principles at
> TJG> work. [...]
>
> Oh I believe I do more or less understand what the founders intended
> over there, what I was unclear on is the nature of the proposed
> replacement as it pertains to public funding for software. Arguably
> OT here, but is that still flamewar material?
That was only idle speculation on my part, and retract it. Its only
purpose was as an example, but on further reflection it's just a
landmine that diverts attention away from the serious issue.
I give up; it is too frustrating to communicate in this medium, which
has much less bandwidth than face-to-face.
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> I give up; it is too frustrating to communicate in this medium, which
> has much less bandwidth than face-to-face.
This is true.
What's needed is a Jon Stewert on Crossfire moment.
--
An ideal world is left as an excercise to the reader.
--- Paul Graham, On Lisp 8.1
No excuses. No apologies. Just do it.
--- Erik Naggum
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uwtqmkbi1.fsf@nhplace.com>
Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> writes:
> Oh I believe I do more or less understand what the founders intended
> over there, what I was unclear on is the nature of the proposed
> replacement as it pertains to public funding for software. Arguably
> OT here, but is that still flamewar material?
Just for the record, I don't think it's OT as long as subject lines
are maintained correctly. Perhaps we should have changed the subject
line a while ago. (But then, maybe having not done so is what has
kept anyone interested in a real flamewar from being cued to dive in.)
But in my mind, nothing could be more relevant to Lisp than how to use
it in a commercially successful way. We differ in many ways: on how
we specifically want to spend our time, on how much income we need or
want, and on what strategies we think will achieve that. But
something I assume we don't differ on is that we want to succeed
economically and we probably even want others to succeed too, so that
we can have a marketplace to do business in tomorrow. As such, not
only is this not philosophically off topic, but it offers
opportunities to enrich us in our on-topic pursuits.
Hence, I think no one should be shy about continuing to speak on this
topic as long as they keep their tone relatively civil. At least, IMO.
On 28 Apr 2005 06:44:24 -0700, Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Robert Reich was interviewed by a BBC documentary called The Century of
> Self. He helped explain why our bonds of community are much weaker than
> before.
> http://www.thecorporation.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=587
> They claim that we've transitioned to a free market morality, every man
> for herself; and politicians now pander to a small bloc of swing
> voters.
What you're describing is "democratic morality" -- the polar opposite
of "free market morality". [I guess the closest thing you'd find to a
true "free market morality" would be in the relatively free-market
19th century -- precisely the time you're claiming our "bonds of
community" are now weaker than!]
Highly recommended reading on the same theme: Hans-Hermann Hoppe's
_Democracy: The God that Failed_
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765808684 -- introduction
online at http://www.mises.org/hoppeintro.asp)
> True, money is only lubrication, to match up consumers and producers.
> However, we seem to have the Java of monetary systems. And the
More like the INTERCAL of monetary systems.
Without enough "please"s in the program.
> mechanism of controlling money appears outside our democratic control.
Bah. We can only wish.
--
If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem.
-- C. Durance, Computer Science 234
(setq reply-to
(concatenate 'string "Paul Foley " "<mycroft" '(··@) "actrix.gen.nz>"))
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> But hey, you can't change the world. As I wrote, it will be interesting
> how a company like Opera will fare in the browser market. And I also
> say again, that making tools better and cheaper, there might be a
> possibility to still compete with open-source.
I think for end-consumer software that's a failing business model.
Who'd pay for a browser or mail reader? I'd never _use_ a mail reader
that wasn't open source, for obvious reasons (I've used many in the past
10+ years and they were all free software, which you had to compile
yourself). I'd wish software like Skype was not just "free" but
open-source so I could see for myself that it isn't the spyware one has
come to know from those guys. But at least it's free. Who's using
proprietary software? Well, large companies do. With special-purpose
business solutions. If you want something special, you have to pay.
That's a valid market for commercial, closed-source software. And
perhaps games. The rest isn't, anymore.
mkb.
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uwtqnk7h3.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>
> > But hey, you can't change the world. As I wrote, it will be interesting
> > how a company like Opera will fare in the browser market. And I also
> > say again, that making tools better and cheaper, there might be a
> > possibility to still compete with open-source.
> I think for end-consumer software that's a failing business model.
> Who'd pay for a browser or mail reader?
End-consumers.
> I'd never _use_ a mail reader that wasn't open source
End-consumers don't know what "source" is, and have no interest in it
> Who's using proprietary software?
All end-consumers.
All corporations.
> If you want something special, you have to pay.
> That's a valid market for commercial, closed-source software.
"Valid" market? What's that?
Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
>>I think for end-consumer software that's a failing business model.
>>Who'd pay for a browser or mail reader?
>
>
> End-consumers.
Probably not. They have that software bundled with their system,
and it's already hard enough to use for them. They won't go
looking for another solution.
A meager 5% of Windowlers use Firefox now (estimated; I read that
all Mozilla Browsers on all platforms have almost 10% market share
now), and that's free, open, and cross-platform.
>>I'd never _use_ a mail reader that wasn't open source
>
>
> End-consumers don't know what "source" is, and have no interest in it
True. While I prefer my stuff being open-source, I also use some
of Apple's software. Well, not Mail, since it has no newsreader.
>>Who's using proprietary software?
>
>
> All end-consumers.
> All corporations.
Yes, but end-consumers expect everything to come with their PC.
They don't even consider looking for an OS (that's why they all
end up with a PC and a worm-ridded OS). Maybe they'll buy Office,
but OpenOffice has a much better price tag.
>>If you want something special, you have to pay.
>>That's a valid market for commercial, closed-source software.
>
>
> "Valid" market? What's that?
One where people actually pay you I suppose.
It looks like people don't pay for software anymore, but for
stupid ringtones for their phones, and for stupid little games.
Or maybe that's just the kids (mind-wise, includes many people
over 20), I don't know.
I'm hoping that there are enough other people out there, the kind
that enthuses when a new Mac OS comes out, the kind that actually
gets excited about good software, the kind that pays for it.
Maybe it's a good niche market, if the development cost can be
kept low.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uk6mn63t2.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
> >>I think for end-consumer software that's a failing business model.
> >>Who'd pay for a browser or mail reader?
> > End-consumers.
>
> Probably not. They have that software bundled with their system
which they paid for.
> it's already hard enough to use for them.
I don't know what that means. You're beginning to
sound like some kind of deranged Linux idiot.
Windows is WAY FUCKING EASIER and WAY LESS BUGGY for home users.
Someday it might be different, but wishful thinking will not change it.
I will not debate that point with you. If you don't agree,
then we live in different worlds, and that's that.
> They won't go looking for another solution.
Everyone that I know has purchased third-party end-user software.
Usually, lots of it.
As for browsers and mailers, some of them purchased Opera,
but I think that IE, Safari (both of which are proprietary,
and paid-for) and Firefox will dominate the market.
Lots of them have purchased Eudora, which is much better
than the Mozilla offering. Of course, most people use Outlook Express,
or in the corporate environment (and on their laptops): Outlook
> A meager 5% of Windowlers use Firefox now (estimated; I read that all
> Mozilla Browsers on all platforms have almost 10% market share now),
> and that's free, open, and cross-platform.
So what?
I didn't say that nobody uses free software.
I said that everybody uses proprietary software.
> >>I'd never _use_ a mail reader that wasn't open source
> > End-consumers don't know what "source" is, and have no interest in it
>
> True. While I prefer my stuff being open-source, I also use some of
> Apple's software. Well, not Mail, since it has no newsreader.
>
> >>Who's using proprietary software?
> > All end-consumers.
> > All corporations.
>
> Yes, but end-consumers expect everything to come with their PC.
No, they go to Micro Center and CompUSA and buy tons
of software, every day. It's a big business.
> They don't even consider looking for an OS (that's why they all end
> up with a PC and a worm-ridded OS). Maybe they'll buy Office, but
> OpenOffice has a much better price tag.
OpenOffice is a crappy second-rate replacement for MS Office.
Maybe it will get better someday.
> >>If you want something special, you have to pay.
> >>That's a valid market for commercial, closed-source software.
> > "Valid" market? What's that?
>
> One where people actually pay you I suppose.
Do you not have lots of "computer stores" where you live?
Here in the USA, we have them in every mall, and strip mall.
They sell software.
Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
>>
>>>>I think for end-consumer software that's a failing business model.
>>>>Who'd pay for a browser or mail reader?
>>>
>>>End-consumers.
>>
>>Probably not. They have that software bundled with their system
>
>
> which they paid for.
Sure, but they don't notice it, since it comes with the PC.
>
>>it's already hard enough to use for them.
>
>
> I don't know what that means. You're beginning to
> sound like some kind of deranged Linux idiot.
> Windows is WAY FUCKING EASIER and WAY LESS BUGGY for home users.
Calm down, ok? When I started using Windows (98) I was appalled
by its weirdness. I started using Linux shortly after that and
while installing it might take some expertise, I found the UI more
consistent. To configure *anything* on Windows you often need to
be an expert. My friends *always* call a CS student when they
need to do anything on their machine. I got my dad a Centrino
laptop with XP and he also can't do anything with it. Ok, that's
my dad...
I switched to a Mac in Winter '03, and regret having gotten a
Windows machine for my dad. I thought more mainstream would be
better. Well...
> Someday it might be different, but wishful thinking will not change it.
> I will not debate that point with you. If you don't agree,
> then we live in different worlds, and that's that.
I never said I want to debate about Linux (which after all is used
by deranged idiots, in your perception). Different worlds, yes,
obviously.
>>They won't go looking for another solution.
>
>
> Everyone that I know has purchased third-party end-user software.
> Usually, lots of it.
The people I know (ok, the majority students) use mostly freeware.
The ones that got their machine custom-built (again, by CS
students) use illegal copies of XP in most cases. Because they
want, not because the student talked them into it.
> As for browsers and mailers, some of them purchased Opera,
> but I think that IE, Safari (both of which are proprietary,
> and paid-for) and Firefox will dominate the market.
Yes.
> Lots of them have purchased Eudora, which is much better
> than the Mozilla offering. Of course, most people use Outlook Express,
> or in the corporate environment (and on their laptops): Outlook
Interesting. I haven't seen any Eudora for about 7 years, and
that was on our high school mac (system 7?). Can't really
remember what it was like. Most people I know use Outlook. The
computer people use Thunderbird.
>>A meager 5% of Windowlers use Firefox now (estimated; I read that all
>>Mozilla Browsers on all platforms have almost 10% market share now),
>>and that's free, open, and cross-platform.
>
>
> So what?
>
> I didn't say that nobody uses free software.
> I said that everybody uses proprietary software.
Ok, I misinterpreted it.
>>Yes, but end-consumers expect everything to come with their PC.
>
>
> No, they go to Micro Center and CompUSA and buy tons
> of software, every day. It's a big business.
Ok, maybe my perception there is skewed. Poor students don't
spend much money anyway. Maybe the USA is different from Germany
in that respect, too.
>>They don't even consider looking for an OS (that's why they all end
>>up with a PC and a worm-ridded OS). Maybe they'll buy Office, but
>>OpenOffice has a much better price tag.
>
>
> OpenOffice is a crappy second-rate replacement for MS Office.
> Maybe it will get better someday.
It's crappy, and I only use it to read ppt and doc files.
I doubt that MS Office is much more usable, though (Sun sells OO
as Star Office, after all). Office suites in general are full of
UI complexity, far too much for me being able to use them for
about anything.
The people I know who use OO don't complain, BTW.
>>>>If you want something special, you have to pay.
>>>>That's a valid market for commercial, closed-source software.
>>>
>>>"Valid" market? What's that?
>>
>>One where people actually pay you I suppose.
>
>
> Do you not have lots of "computer stores" where you live?
> Here in the USA, we have them in every mall, and strip mall.
> They sell software.
In Germany there's many more small computer stores. The big malls
and department stores also have software corners, but I don't
really know if people buy lots of stuff there. I don't see people
using a really wide range of software.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
On 2005-04-28 03:46:46, Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> Yes, but end-consumers expect everything to come with their PC.
Then why do they use Windows?
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uy8b395d3.fsf@nhplace.com>
Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
> > Kent M Pitman wrote:
> >> That's great for people who find that fulfilling, but it misses the point.
> >> I'm not going to belabor the point. I've done that many times.
>
> Kent has written many times in the past (on comp.lang.lisp, among
> other places) about some negative consequences of the free software
> movement.
>
> Perhaps Kent will answer himself, but just for kicks let me put some words
> in his mouth: [...]
Hey, I'll go with those words, Don. Maybe not quite as rambly as I'd have
been -- and Kent usually isn't so Bob Dole-like as to write all of Kent's
remarks in third peson, but still... not bad. Thanks!
Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
> Kent wants to design new complex software, implement it, and sell it for
> a premium price. Before the rise of free software, this was a feasible
> business model, and would result in good wages for the programmer. These
> days, Kent has to compete with free software offerings. Even if Kent's
> software is 10-20% better on some metric, he won't find enough customers
> at a high enough price to pay for his development. Whereas, before free
> software, the competitive software was produced by organizations that had
> to recoup their costs, and Kent could earn a nice living producing higher
> quality software for slightly higher prices.
Unfortunately, there is a problem with this argumentation. Software is
getting more and more complex and the cost of building up something
interesting takes more and more resources. This leads to a concentration
process which can be observed everywhere in our economy (larger companies
buying smaller concurrents)[*]. Without free software, there would be some
point when even Kent could only achieve results working as a small wheel
inside a large company as Microsoft, Oracle, etc... I doubt that this
would give him the satisfaction he longs for. With free software at hand,
there is at least some chance that a small group of people can put
something reasonable together which can compete against those large
companies.[+]
Kent's writing had indeed quite an impact on my view of free software, but
I still think that the world would be worse without it.
Nicolas.
[*] There are probably better examples, but here are some from software
technology which come to my mind: the CAS market dominated by
Mathematica/Maple (and seeing a strange limbo of Macsyma), maybe CAD
systems, maybe also simulation software. Also the market for operating
systems could very well be Microsoft-only without free software
(Linux/BSD/Hurd).
[+] GPL/BSD-licensing comment skipped, because I think that there is no
final answer also for this issue.
Nicolas Neuss <·······@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de> writes:
> With free software at hand, there is at least some chance that a
> small group of people can put something reasonable together which
> can compete against those large companies.
Putting aside patents, trade secrets and copyright issues, it
seems as if you are saying that you believe that the only ways to
avoid being a cog in a corporate machine are:
1. Sell your time (i.e. a service-oriented business model).
2. Try to produce a competitive product.
I can see how "free" software helps with #1 - there's plenty of
"make work" involved with supporting a lot of free software
packages, even when they "work" relatively well.
What isn't so clear is how it assists with #2. If your business
model is to put out the same crap (as the corporate machine) for
less $$$$, then I will conceed that it is at least theoretically
of assistance. Scieneer (based on cmucl) might be a good example,
although i'm not sure how well it compares against those corporate
behemoths Franz and Lispworks (or whomever they view as their
competition).
I know a bit about new product development (both from academic
classes and from work experience). In my opinion, there are three
basic ways to obtain market share:
1. Produce an "alternative" product that is "just as good as the
competition - only cheaper". This "loss leader" strategy can
sometimes be a good way to gain marketshare. However, it is a
very expensive way to do so - and can even undermine the
financial basis of the market itself. Hence, this strategy
can be a component of a business plan, but not the basis of
it.
2. Produce an "alternative" product that is "just as good" as the
competition and then focus on growing the market. This can
work for a while, but it does eventually reach the point of
diminishing returns as market penetration approaches 100% (or
worse, growth stagnates or even reverses as in the AI
winter). This is less expensive than the 1st strategy, and
more stable, but is still insufficient as the basis for a
long-term plan.
3. Produce an "innovative" product. Innovation is difficult to
do correctly, but if you can pull it off, you can score a real
coup. Sometimes you can create a market that didn't exist
before (bonus!). Sometimes you can transform the way a market
operates. Sometimes you just win big.
Innovation is also expensive, which is why companies tend to
cycle through periods where they innovate and then periods
when they coast (or stagnate). Because it is so difficult, it
is not a sufficient basis for a business plan.
A good business plan has to be based on all three of these
strategies, in the right proportion (depending on market
conditions, captial reserves, etc.).
I can see "free" software helping with 1. Someone else does the
heavy lifting (whoever produced the software) - and you use their
effort to put your competition out of business. Just try not to
put yourself out of business in the process...
I can see "free" software helping with 2. Someone else does the
heavy lifting (whoever produced the software) - and you add your
financial resources to grow the market.
I don't see "free" software helping significantly with 3. Most
of the free software that I am familiar with is simply a
re-implementation of something someone else has already done.
Occasionally, there is an innovative feature added, but the
fundamental application is typically not very innovative. (There
are, I assume, exceptions to this, but I probably don't use them
much).
What am I missing?
To wrap up, I (and I believe Kent) consider the effectiveness with
which Dell commoditized the PC hardware vending business to be a
warning sign to those who are interested in being software
vendors. The concern is that "free" software has the same effect
on the software vending market that Dell has had on the PC vending
market. If you want to be (or already are) a software vendor,
this is a reasonable concern (even if happens to not be true at
this time, as markets are not a static thing).
If you just want to be a programmer, then don't worry. "Free"
software is your friend (and probably always will be).
If you just want to be a consultant (e.g. a service vendor),
then don't worry. "Free" software can be your friend (or your
worst nightmare...).
If you just want to be a consumer of computing-related goods and
services, then don't worry. "Free" software is your friend (so
far).
--jon
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u8y328x1f.fsf@nhplace.com>
Jon Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> Nicolas Neuss <·······@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de> writes:
>
> > With free software at hand, there is at least some chance that a
> > small group of people can put something reasonable together which
> > can compete against those large companies.
>
> Putting aside patents, trade secrets and copyright issues, it
> seems as if you are saying that you believe that the only ways to
> avoid being a cog in a corporate machine are:
>
> 1. Sell your time (i.e. a service-oriented business model).
> 2. Try to produce a competitive product.
>
> I can see how "free" software helps with #1 - there's plenty of
> "make work" involved with supporting a lot of free software
> packages, even when they "work" relatively well.
>
> What isn't so clear is how it assists with #2. If your business
> model is to put out the same crap (as the corporate machine) for
> less $$$$, then I will conceed that it is at least theoretically
> of assistance. Scieneer (based on cmucl) might be a good example,
> although i'm not sure how well it compares against those corporate
> behemoths Franz and Lispworks (or whomever they view as their
> competition).
>
> I know a bit about new product development (both from academic
> classes and from work experience). In my opinion, there are three
> basic ways to obtain market share:
>
> 1. Produce an "alternative" product that is "just as good as the
> competition - only cheaper". This "loss leader" strategy can
> sometimes be a good way to gain marketshare. However, it is a
> very expensive way to do so - and can even undermine the
> financial basis of the market itself. Hence, this strategy
> can be a component of a business plan, but not the basis of
> it.
>
> 2. Produce an "alternative" product that is "just as good" as the
> competition and then focus on growing the market. This can
> work for a while, but it does eventually reach the point of
> diminishing returns as market penetration approaches 100% (or
> worse, growth stagnates or even reverses as in the AI
> winter). This is less expensive than the 1st strategy, and
> more stable, but is still insufficient as the basis for a
> long-term plan.
>
> 3. Produce an "innovative" product. Innovation is difficult to
> do correctly, but if you can pull it off, you can score a real
> coup. Sometimes you can create a market that didn't exist
> before (bonus!). Sometimes you can transform the way a market
> operates. Sometimes you just win big.
>
> Innovation is also expensive, which is why companies tend to
> cycle through periods where they innovate and then periods
> when they coast (or stagnate). Because it is so difficult, it
> is not a sufficient basis for a business plan.
>
> A good business plan has to be based on all three of these
> strategies, in the right proportion (depending on market
> conditions, captial reserves, etc.).
>
> I can see "free" software helping with 1. Someone else does the
> heavy lifting (whoever produced the software) - and you use their
> effort to put your competition out of business. Just try not to
> put yourself out of business in the process...
>
> I can see "free" software helping with 2. Someone else does the
> heavy lifting (whoever produced the software) - and you add your
> financial resources to grow the market.
>
> I don't see "free" software helping significantly with 3. Most
> of the free software that I am familiar with is simply a
> re-implementation of something someone else has already done.
> Occasionally, there is an innovative feature added, but the
> fundamental application is typically not very innovative. (There
> are, I assume, exceptions to this, but I probably don't use them
> much).
>
> What am I missing?
>
> To wrap up, I (and I believe Kent) consider the effectiveness with
> which Dell commoditized the PC hardware vending business to be a
> warning sign to those who are interested in being software
> vendors. The concern is that "free" software has the same effect
> on the software vending market that Dell has had on the PC vending
> market. If you want to be (or already are) a software vendor,
> this is a reasonable concern (even if happens to not be true at
> this time, as markets are not a static thing).
>
> If you just want to be a programmer, then don't worry. "Free"
> software is your friend (and probably always will be).
>
> If you just want to be a consultant (e.g. a service vendor),
> then don't worry. "Free" software can be your friend (or your
> worst nightmare...).
Actually, here I think you're slightly off in your account.
A lot of people who make free software think they will end up being able
to consult on the product when done, but I bet that in general it is rare
that the person who makes something gets to do that unless the product is
big and hard to understand. Being in the consultant business is a tough
thing because you have to have the right resources to respond to arbitrary
needs. In general, that means that big organizations can be consultants
but little guys will be whomped because they can't keep their plate
statistically full and so they have to charge a premium rate to cover down
time, while a big organization can have enough things going at once that it
can rely on statistical degrees of availability on this or that project and
shift people among.
I'm generalizing this from probably too little data, and I'm sure there are
bound to be exceptions, but my main point is not to rely on the "existence
proof"-like nature of the exceptional cases as proof of some universal truth.
>
> If you just want to be a consumer of computing-related goods and
> services, then don't worry. "Free" software is your friend (so
> far).
Right, exactly. A lot of people (and I hate to appear age-ist about this,
but I still think it's mostly young people who have not lived long enough
to have to have run into desperate shortages of money for sicknesses,
vacations, family emergencies, personal illness or disability, unrelated
financial problems, changes in market making their "skills" less valuable,
changes in the global market making their "money" less valuable, etc.) seem
to think that the problem is merely "making things I want to use cheaper
to get".
What's sad is that people think I'm complaining just for me. I'm also
saying "I think many of you on the other side of this are being deceived
and may come to regret your position later". I went through a very generous
time in my college days myself. I'm just grown up now. I see things
differently.
What I lament MOST, in fact, is that the politics of the world are screwed
up. There are some very generous and thoughtful people in CS who understand
"process" and "how to count" and stuff like that in ways that would allow
them to confront issues like overpopulation, global warming, fair voting,
and other important issues with more than a shrug and an "I don't see a
problem here" like we get from our all-too-comfortable and not-so-generous
leaders today. If those people in CS who have new ideas about how to make
the world work had money, they might make some changes to the world. But
instead they are breeding a whole generation and a whole industry of
economically disempowered people. And the people who are making the money
instead are laughing their way to the bank that all they have to do is
provide "free pacifiers" to these smart, valuable people and they'll work
for free.
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> And the people who are making the money instead are laughing their
> way to the bank that all they have to do is provide "free pacifiers"
> to these smart, valuable people and they'll work for free.
What are these "free pacifiers"? Can you be more specific?
--
Steven E. Harris
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <usm1ar4z9.fsf@nhplace.com>
"Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
>
> > And the people who are making the money instead are laughing their
> > way to the bank that all they have to do is provide "free pacifiers"
> > to these smart, valuable people and they'll work for free.
>
> What are these "free pacifiers"? Can you be more specific?
I was making a metaphorical reference to "pacifiers" like you give babies
to quiet them. There are recurring references to needing to "pacify the
masses" in the study of political history... they need something to distract
them from the big issues. Drugs, television, free software, etc. Anything
to keep people from becoming involved directly in politics.
(And when that fails, make sure they're involved in the wrong things;
like making people think that gay marriage and abortion are what is
going to bring the US to its knees, and not economic bankruptcy due to
overspending on not just on social programs (many of which I support,
btw) but on wars, tax breaks for the rich, failure to restrain overuse
of critical fuels, failure to control pollution that will have to be
cleaned up later, etc.)
Yes, there are jobs. But there should be opportunities to get rich. Just
like in any other aspect of society. We're the only part of society I've
ever seen that has worked hard to disempower itself. Unilateral disarmament.
It's one thing if other industries are disempowered at the same time, but
it's quite another if it just means that all we'll ever be able to aspire to
is work-a-day jobs answering to someone who knows less about the industry
than us.
The solution to the problems of the world economy today, including the
severe outsourcing problem the US is seeing, is not free software.
It's people who are making things standing up and charging money for
it. In the US, workers unionized a while back and it worked. Now the
US unions are confusedly thinking they need to do more, demand more
wages. But they're wrong. What they need to do is to go abroad and
help people in other countries unionize. It's them, not us, who don't
demand enough money. When they finally do, we won't lose money so fast.
The market will start working again and people will select on normal value
issues. But right now everything is out of whack and the market can't work
because there isn't balance.
When everyone asks for what they are worth, the standard of living
will come up, not just where the jobs are going now but everywhere.
As long as someone is willing to ask for less, the person willing to
grovel most will be the person to typify the way we all live.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Yes, there are jobs. But there should be opportunities to get rich. Just
> like in any other aspect of society. We're the only part of society I've
> ever seen that has worked hard to disempower itself. Unilateral disarmament.
> It's one thing if other industries are disempowered at the same time, but
> it's quite another if it just means that all we'll ever be able to aspire to
> is work-a-day jobs answering to someone who knows less about the industry
> than us.
Maybe selling software products in the manner of the scrink-wrapped
software programs of the 80'ties is a bad business model to start with.
You will want to offer a way that a company with money and a problem can
turn a part of their money into a solution to their problem.
A solution to a companies problem can consist of stuff like ready made
business deals with 3. party providers of goods and services, standards
for goods and services supplemented with well thought out procedures for
checking and enforcing them, a service organisation with people on-call
who can fix problems fast so they do not delay busines, customiced
machinery, customiced software, shrink wrapped software or open source
software that you have integrated with the other parts of the solution,
well written documentation and training material, well thought out
business cases for everything involved etc.
Such an offering will often include all this and a promice of "we will
handle all this for you as long as you pay us xxx xxxx a month", thereby
providing the company with a problem an easy way to turn money into a
solution to their problem.
The software products that are parts of the offering or are used in its
creation or the ongoing day to day work, is probably not that important
to succes or fiasco.
However using open source can lower the need for capital when starting
such a company. The availability of open source to students and
professionals help them learn more about how to build and use software
than had they only had shrink wrapped software available to them. This
can only be of benefit to the cpmpanies that hire them or the companies
they start themself.
Kristian
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> wrote:
+---------------
| When everyone asks for what they are worth, the standard of living
| will come up, not just where the jobs are going now but everywhere.
| As long as someone is willing to ask for less, the person willing to
| grovel most will be the person to typify the way we all live.
+---------------
Hmmm... This seems to be a variant of the "The Tragedy of
The Commons"[1] argument, except instead of overconsumption
we have (self-)undervaluation.
-Rob
[1] Garrett Hardin, Science, 162(1968):1243-1248. Archived at
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243>
and <http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/sotp/commons.shtml>
[also <http://dieoff.org/page95.htm>].
Also by Garrett Hardin, "Ethical Implications of Carrying
Capacity" (1977) <http://dieoff.org/page96.htm>.
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
From: Stefan Nobis
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87sm1a56m8.fsf@snobis.de>
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> When everyone asks for what they are worth, the standard of living
> will come up, not just where the jobs are going now but everywhere.
So you believe in endless growth and wealth for everyone? 1% of
all people in the world get nearly all the money and you think
unions going to the poor may help?
There are mass starvation, wars, tyranns and more.
I think now you are the one who oversimplifies things.
--
Stefan.
Stefan Nobis wrote:
> Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
>
>
>>When everyone asks for what they are worth, the standard of living
>>will come up, not just where the jobs are going now but everywhere.
>
>
> So you believe in endless growth and wealth for everyone? 1% of
> all people in the world get nearly all the money and you think
> unions going to the poor may help?
Whose fault is that? To me this looks as a consequence of
oppression and lack of freedom for most people on earth. In a
fair worldwide market, where criminals would be punished harshly,
these problems wouldn't be a huge issue.
> There are mass starvation, wars, tyranns and more.
That shows that this world's politics are utterly broken. Most
countries are full of s**t (the leaders, not the citizens).
> I think now you are the one who oversimplifies things.
>
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>
> That shows that this world's politics are utterly broken. Most
> countries are full of s**t (the leaders, not the citizens).
>
The citizens are to also to blame. If there were better followers
there would also be less problems. Its a two-way street, many
people will follow s**tty leaders, just take a look at history
where people have "gone along" with tyrants. The leaders could
not be in power with the (even tacit) support of the general
population.
Wade
Wade Humeniuk wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>
>>
>> That shows that this world's politics are utterly broken. Most
>> countries are full of s**t (the leaders, not the citizens).
>>
>
> The citizens are to also to blame. If there were better followers
> there would also be less problems. Its a two-way street, many
> people will follow s**tty leaders, just take a look at history
> where people have "gone along" with tyrants. The leaders could
> not be in power with the (even tacit) support of the general
(without)
> population.
I agree. It seems that Germans have learnt nothing in 70 years.
US-Americans also have all forgotten about their original founding
ideas.
Their so masochistic, people vote for the same parties again, even
if everything in the country goes down. Talk about clueless.
Touching the hot plate again and again.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Wade Humeniuk wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>
>>
>> That shows that this world's politics are utterly broken. Most
>> countries are full of s**t (the leaders, not the citizens).
>>
>
> The citizens are to also to blame. If there were better followers
> there would also be less problems. Its a two-way street, many
> people will follow s**tty leaders, just take a look at history
> where people have "gone along" with tyrants. The leaders could
> not be in power with the (even tacit) support of the general
^without
> population.
>
> Wade
On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 20:58:57 GMT, Kent M Pitman wrote:
> The solution to the problems of the world economy today, including the
> severe outsourcing problem the US is seeing, is not free software.
> It's people who are making things standing up and charging money for
> it. In the US, workers unionized a while back and it worked. Now the
If "caused a lot of people to starve" can be considered "working", I
guess.
> US unions are confusedly thinking they need to do more, demand more
> wages. But they're wrong. What they need to do is to go abroad and
> help people in other countries unionize. It's them, not us, who don't
They need to go abroad and prevent foreigners working, letting them
starve so that the privileged few who are permitted to work can earn
more? Why is that a good thing?
--
" ... I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a
pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!"
-- Winston Churchill
(setq reply-to
(concatenate 'string "Paul Foley " "<mycroft" '(··@) "actrix.gen.nz>"))
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Right, exactly. A lot of people (and I hate to appear age-ist
> about this, but I still think it's mostly young people who have
> not lived long enough to have to have run into desperate shortages
> of money for sicknesses, vacations, family emergencies, personal
> illness or disability, unrelated financial problems, changes in
> market making their "skills" less valuable,changes in the global
> market making their "money" less valuable, etc.) seemto think that
> the problem is merely "making things I want to use cheaper to get".
An important issue is that many Europeans have better developed social
support systems than we do. Many free software contributors come from
there. So they don't have exactly the same worries.
In this light, the serious problem of the GPL could be that it opens
Americans to free market discipline. It subverts the good and bad parts
of copyright, which itself is a social contract.
(For those whose fingers are itching to reply saying the free market is
better than sliced bread, please note that I'm likely familiar with
what you're about to say, and don't have time to present the case. I
accept that most think Lisp users are nuts, and that most people
disagree with this post.)
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Kent M Pitman wrote:
>
>>Right, exactly. A lot of people (and I hate to appear age-ist
>>about this, but I still think it's mostly young people who have
>>not lived long enough to have to have run into desperate shortages
>>of money for sicknesses, vacations, family emergencies, personal
>>illness or disability, unrelated financial problems, changes in
>>market making their "skills" less valuable,changes in the global
>>market making their "money" less valuable, etc.) seemto think that
>>the problem is merely "making things I want to use cheaper to get".
>
>
> An important issue is that many Europeans have better developed social
> support systems than we do. Many free software contributors come from
> there. So they don't have exactly the same worries.
Wait. That means that open-source IS effectively tax-funded.
With European taxes. One more reason to reform the German social
and tax system.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> > An important issue is that many Europeans have better developed
> > social support systems than we do. Many free software contributors
> > come from there. So they don't have exactly the same worries.
>
> Wait. That means that open-source IS effectively tax-funded.
> With European taxes. One more reason to reform the German social
> and tax system.
Not quite, but close. Europeans unfortunately have far less fear of
being poor and buried by medical bills.
The reasoning behind going to a more US-like system is to scare people
away from luxuries like writing opensource or sharing scientific
discoveries.
So for example, law degrees should incur huge college debts, so people
have to work for big law firms and wealthy clients, rather than wasting
their time on the poor.
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Not quite, but close. Europeans unfortunately have far less fear of
> being poor and buried by medical bills.
>
> The reasoning behind going to a more US-like system is to scare people
> away from luxuries like writing opensource or sharing scientific
> discoveries.
>
> So for example, law degrees should incur huge college debts, so people
> have to work for big law firms and wealthy clients, rather than wasting
> their time on the poor.
I like your sarcasm (or are you serious?), but a social system has
two sides. In Germany if you have some kids you can get more
money on welfare than some people who work. That's just not fair,
and one of the reasons why we have such high unemployment.
There are suggestions how to simplify the social system, so that
it's more fair for everybody, in fact without having anybody
starve, and at the same time it would save billions.
Unfortunately our two big parties don't give a damn and instead
try one doomed reform after another.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> > So for example, law degrees should incur huge college debts, so
> > people have to work for big law firms and wealthy clients, rather
> > than wasting their time on the poor.
>
> I like your sarcasm (or are you serious?), but a social system has
> two sides. In Germany if you have some kids you can get more
> money on welfare than some people who work. That's just not fair,
> and one of the reasons why we have such high unemployment.
Does it matter if I'm being sarcastic or not? ;) Your point of view
differs from mine, but I'm game to explore possible consequences,
reflected from my set of biases.
My only problem is I think we all agree on enough of reality that we
can constructively discuss Kent's issue -- but somehow we're going off
on tangents, so in my view this conversation is failing. My personal
problem is I seem a little too sloppy in limiting myself to statements
that most will agree on. And to others, those statements may appear
essential to my future lines of reasoning, even when they aren't.
In a high-bandwidth discussion, we can feel out our group and come to
agreements which allow us to proceed further. But in this low-bandwidth
setting, it's easy for turbulence to occur.
That is at least what I think.
I hate to be involved in a very off-topic discussion but ...
On 4258 September 1993, Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> I like your sarcasm (or are you serious?), but a social system has two
> sides. In Germany if you have some kids you can get more money on
> welfare than some people who work.
That's rubbish. Could you please get a clue before dissing people
having kids? Having children is among the Top-5 causes for becoming
poor in Germany.
> That's just not fair, and one of the reasons why we have such high
> unemployment.
As the LHS of your conclusion doesn't hold, you may conclude and judge
what you like, but that doesn't mean it applies in the real world.
Holger
--
--- http://www.coling.uni-freiburg.de/~schauer/ ---
Fachbegriffe der Informatik - Einfach erkl�rt
88: Windows
Ein ulkig buntes Make-Money-Fast System ohne jede remote login
M�glichkeit, bei dem die GUI und der Kern einen monolithischen
Block ohne Netzwerkinterface bilden, damit man Anwendungen nur
benutzen kann wenn man selbst an der Maschine sitzt, damit der
Hersteller mehr davon verkaufen kann? Kinderkram. Stand der
Technik von 1965. (Markus Kuhn)
Holger Schauer wrote:
> I hate to be involved in a very off-topic discussion but ...
>
> On 4258 September 1993, Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>
>>I like your sarcasm (or are you serious?), but a social system has two
>>sides. In Germany if you have some kids you can get more money on
>>welfare than some people who work.
>
>
> That's rubbish. Could you please get a clue before dissing people
> having kids? Having children is among the Top-5 causes for becoming
> poor in Germany.
Then don't have any if you can't afford them. Kids eat and need
clothes. They cost just the same as in most other countries too.
I think the reason most Germans don't have kids is because
society is very hostile to children.
I don't say that kids don't lower your standard of living, just
like buying a Porsche makes you poor too. I've only read about
criticism about current German welfare, I agree, and there were
mentioned cases of welfare receivers and worker families that
earned �100 less a month than the welfare people. It wasn't my idea.
>>That's just not fair, and one of the reasons why we have such high
>>unemployment.
>
>
> As the LHS of your conclusion doesn't hold, you may conclude and judge
> what you like, but that doesn't mean it applies in the real world.
It was a published case in some newspaper or magazine maybe 1-3
years ago. (Spiegel?)
The RHS was my opinion: That's not fair.
Anyway, there exist alternatives (B�rgergeld) that are both
cheaper, easier to implement, and fairer. So naturally I reject
those systems that have obvious flaws and cost more of my tax money.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>easier to implement, and fairer. So naturally I reject those systems
>that have obvious flaws and cost more of my tax money.
The German welfare system is NOT tax-based. You're doing nothing but
spill clueless FUD and bullshit here. I advise you to, instead of
assuming how these systems might work, if you would design them to be
deliberately bad, you actually acquire some real knowledge first,
instead of just babbling drivel about stuff you don't know jack about
and making a fool out of yourself on Usenet.
Anyways, this does no longer belong in this newsgroup.
mkb.
Matthias Buelow wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>easier to implement, and fairer. So naturally I reject those systems
>>that have obvious flaws and cost more of my tax money.
>
>
> The German welfare system is NOT tax-based. You're doing nothing but
> spill clueless FUD and bullshit here. I advise you to, instead of
Then who pays all those people who don't receive money from the
Arbeitslosen-Insurance? God? Santa Claus?
AFAIK Sozialhilfe comes out of the government, so that means
*taxes* for me. If they only pay Sozialhilfe without actually
getting any money, that would be a contradiction in itself. Or
maybe they print the money (without telling the EU Central Bank)
and then give it to the needy?
Wikipedia says: "Die Zust�ndigkeit der Landkreise, kreisfreien
St�dte und Sonderstatusst�dte besteht nicht nur hinsichtlich der
Verwaltung, sondern auch hinsichtlich der Finanzierung der
Sozialhilfe." So it's local government if that information is
correct.
> assuming how these systems might work, if you would design them to be
> deliberately bad, you actually acquire some real knowledge first,
> instead of just babbling drivel about stuff you don't know jack about
> and making a fool out of yourself on Usenet.
If you dispute the correctness of my claims, especially calling it
"babbling drivel about stuff you don't know jack about" than
please make the corrections to Wikipedia. Other people might be
thankful for it. I'm definitely thankful for having a quick way
to check my perceptions and prejudices against what other people
think is correct.
> Anyways, this does no longer belong in this newsgroup.
Feel free to insult me in private email if you prefer.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>Then who pays all those people who don't receive money from the
>Arbeitslosen-Insurance? God? Santa Claus?
>AFAIK Sozialhilfe comes out of the government, so that means *taxes*
This is only the lowest layer of the net. That which characterizes
the German welfare system is an obligatory national insurance,
independent from taxes, which covers such aspects as healthcare,
unemployment pay, accident insurance and pensions, and is based on
Bismarck's social laws from 1881-1889. This is imho a great
achievement, which has proven itself in over a 100 years and does not
deserve the contempt it often gets in the media by clueless
journalists, and by those who parrot them on Usenet.
mkb.
Matthias Buelow wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>Then who pays all those people who don't receive money from the
>>Arbeitslosen-Insurance? God? Santa Claus?
>>AFAIK Sozialhilfe comes out of the government, so that means *taxes*
>
>
> This is only the lowest layer of the net. That which characterizes
Ok, so we were talking about two different things.
> the German welfare system is an obligatory national insurance,
> independent from taxes, which covers such aspects as healthcare,
> unemployment pay, accident insurance and pensions, and is based on
Sure, all that also exists. But politicians of all colors have
noticed/decided that this is not financeable anymore.
The alternative, insuring yourself privately for healthcare,
unemployment and other things, is cheaper and more efficient, and
most people and experts seem to agree.
I was mentioning Sozialhilfe because it's the one part that has to
stay in the government to provide welfare for those who can't
afford anything (of the above) themselves.
> Bismarck's social laws from 1881-1889. This is imho a great
> achievement, which has proven itself in over a 100 years and does not
> deserve the contempt it often gets in the media by clueless
> journalists, and by those who parrot them on Usenet.
I'd say it worked rather well for 100 years, and indeed I'm
thankful that it did. Now there seem to be problems, and they are
widely acknowledged, as are the abuse cases.
We might not agree on if it works or doesn't, if it's well
designed as it is or not, but that doesn't change anything about
the situation.
Well, I too hope we can close this thread now...
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
On 4258 September 1993, Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> Holger Schauer wrote:
>> I hate to be involved in a very off-topic discussion but ...
>> On 4258 September 1993, Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>>>I like your sarcasm (or are you serious?), but a social system has two
>>>sides. In Germany if you have some kids you can get more money on
>>>welfare than some people who work.
>> That's rubbish. Could you please get a clue before dissing people
>> having kids? Having children is among the Top-5 causes for becoming
>> poor in Germany.
> Then don't have any if you can't afford them. Kids eat and need
> clothes. They cost just the same as in most other countries too.
WTF are you arguing for or against? You seemed to argue that in
Germany, one could earn more money just by having kids than by
working. I can't see how your current reply is related to your
previous posting, my answer or reality, for that matter.
> I think the reason most Germans don't have kids is because society
> is very hostile to children.
That's an entirely different topic. Stop banging strawmen, will you?
> I don't say that kids don't lower your standard of living, just like
> buying a Porsche makes you poor too. I've only read about criticism
> about current German welfare, I agree, and there were mentioned cases
> of welfare receivers and worker families that earned 100 less a month
> than the welfare people. It wasn't my idea.
Well, that some people earn enough money to afford some car for 100M$
while I don't, also isn't exactly my idea of fairness. But I don't run
around or post to innocent technical usenet discussion groups
pretending that this is unfair as such or that such people are a
common phenomenon.
> Anyway, there exist alternatives (B�rgergeld) that are both cheaper,
> easier to implement, and fairer. So naturally I reject those systems
> that have obvious flaws and cost more of my tax money.
You are of course the direct poor victim of those overwhelming masses
of kids-having welfare abusers. And about the only victim, too. Sorry
you.
Holger, Fup2: poster
--
--- http://www.coling.uni-freiburg.de/~schauer/ ---
"Being nice to uneducated, untrained, unskilled fools who effectively
complain that the world is not to their lazy liking _is_ an option,but
forcing others to accomodate them because there are lazy idiots out
there who do not want to learn anything at all, is not."
-- Erik Naggum in comp.lang.lisp
From: Stefan Nobis
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87oeby55ts.fsf@snobis.de>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> I like your sarcasm (or are you serious?), but a social system
> has two sides. In Germany if you have some kids you can get
> more money on welfare than some people who work. That's just
> not fair, and one of the reasons why we have such high
> unemployment.
Huh, not so fast. Do you have kids? Do you know how expensive kids
are? There are some holes in the laws and there are some people
telling lies to get more money.
But if you really only get what the laws says you are allowed to,
then, yes, a family with some kids get more money from wellfare
than some singles get from their job -- but is it fair too let
kids be hungry (and in germany there are IIRC about one million
kids living below what is called "Lebensminimum" and who suffer
hunger, are not able to really paricipate in social life and so
on).
Do you really want to work in a so called 1-Euro-Job? Are you able
to live with less than 1000,- EUR per month with one or two kids?
Do you think about 400,- EUR per month for a single is too much
(given that's nearly impossible to get an appartment for less than
200,- EUR)?
It's not all that simple. You are right, the wellfare system in
Germany has problems, changes are needed. But it's a really
complex matter and there are no simple solutions and the system
will never be fair for everyone.
--
Stefan.
Stefan Nobis wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>I like your sarcasm (or are you serious?), but a social system
>>has two sides. In Germany if you have some kids you can get
>>more money on welfare than some people who work. That's just
>>not fair, and one of the reasons why we have such high
>>unemployment.
>
>
> Huh, not so fast. Do you have kids? Do you know how expensive kids
> are? There are some holes in the laws and there are some people
> telling lies to get more money.
That's the problem.
> But if you really only get what the laws says you are allowed to,
> then, yes, a family with some kids get more money from wellfare
> than some singles get from their job -- but is it fair too let
> kids be hungry (and in germany there are IIRC about one million
> kids living below what is called "Lebensminimum" and who suffer
> hunger, are not able to really paricipate in social life and so
> on).
No, it's ok that they get more than singles -- of course. But
when a family can make more money on welfare than if daddy worked
a steady job, that isn't good.
> Do you really want to work in a so called 1-Euro-Job? Are you able
> to live with less than 1000,- EUR per month with one or two kids?
> Do you think about 400,- EUR per month for a single is too much
> (given that's nearly impossible to get an appartment for less than
> 200,- EUR)?
The current reforms implemented in Germany are total crap, as are
the market-distorting 1�-jobs.
> It's not all that simple. You are right, the wellfare system in
> Germany has problems, changes are needed. But it's a really
> complex matter and there are no simple solutions and the system
> will never be fair for everyone.
I suggest you take a look at the "B�rgergeld" proposals, and
negative taxation and stuff like that.
Just because the two big parties don't have a clue, doesn't mean
that there are no practical solutions to at least improve things
by a good margin.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Stefan Nobis <······@gmx.de> writes:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>> I like your sarcasm (or are you serious?), but a social system
>> has two sides. In Germany if you have some kids you can get
>> more money on welfare than some people who work. That's just
>> not fair, and one of the reasons why we have such high
>> unemployment.
>
> Huh, not so fast. Do you have kids? Do you know how expensive kids
> are? There are some holes in the laws and there are some people
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> telling lies to get more money.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> But if you really only get what the laws says you are allowed to,
> then, yes, a family with some kids get more money from wellfare
> than some singles get from their job -- but is it fair too let
> kids be hungry (and in germany there are IIRC about one million
> kids living below what is called "Lebensminimum" and who suffer
> hunger, are not able to really paricipate in social life and so
> on).
If the state robbed less tax money, perhaps parents would be left with
enough to feed their children. After all their grand parents could
feed four times more children. But the difference is that 100 years
ago the tax rates were less than 5% and now they're more than 50%.
> [...]
> It's not all that simple. You are right, the wellfare system in
> Germany has problems, changes are needed. But it's a really
> complex matter and there are no simple solutions and the system
> will never be fair for everyone.
Yes, it's so much needed that people never survived without it. Your
ancestors got extinguished for lack of it and you don't exist.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
In deep sleep hear sound,
Cat vomit hairball somewhere.
Will find in morning.
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> American politician Ralph Nader also believes in very low taxes -- but
> with loopholes closed. He was interviewed by arch-conservative Pat
> Buchanan:
> http://www.amconmag.com/2004_06_21/cover.html
Thanks for the link. I'll read it.
Generally I sympathise with the Green guys (or independents like
Nader), but lots of the leftist people worldwide are way too
anti-liberty and pro-socialism...
> I've never seen a freemarket believer admit that copyright is an
> anti-freemarket state distortion.
It's protecting you from other people taking your stuff,
proclaiming it as their own production. Seems right to me.
Plagiarism is an infringement on my personal right, IMHO.
> http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.society.labor-unions/msg/d9701de5e7a76627?hl=en
I'll read it.
> But it's a hard topic because people have to look hard for serious
> info. Java books clutter the bookstore and the net, not Lisp. Same with
> economics.
There's so much economic stuff, that I simply refuse to buy books
on that. Everybody presents their ultimate solution, but they are
never implemented anyway...
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Karl A. Krueger
Subject: Re: Comparing copyright law to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <d4tk4a$1sr$1@baldur.whoi.edu>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote:
> Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
>> I've never seen a freemarket believer admit that copyright is an
>> anti-freemarket state distortion.
>
> It's protecting you from other people taking your stuff,
> proclaiming it as their own production. Seems right to me.
> Plagiarism is an infringement on my personal right, IMHO.
But plagiarism and copyright violation are not equivalent.
In plagiarism, I copy your work, take your name off of it, put mine on,
and show it to someone else (a professor; the market; whoever), telling
them that it is my work. If I gain any benefit by plagiarizing, that
benefit is the proceeds of fraud -- since I obtained it by lying
(specifically, lying that I wrote the work).
One can violate copyright without plagiarizing. Joe Fratboy who runs a
Kazaa file-trading server allows his friends to download music sung by
Mariah Carey. However, Joe does not in any regard pretend that *he*
sang those songs. (Indeed, for purposes of indexing he's very careful
to make sure that Mariah Carey's name is on those files; and for
purposes of anonymity he's careful that his own name is not!) There is
no fraud or lying going on here -- Joe does not deceive the downloader
about the nature or provenance of the music.
It is also possible to plagiarize without violating copyright. One may,
for instance, plagiarize from the public domain. All of the writings of
Benjamin Franklin are today in the public domain. If I published one of
Franklin's essays and purported that I was the author, I would be
defrauding the readers ... but not violating copyright, since there is
no copyright on works in the public domain.
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu> { s/example/whoi/ }
From: Ulrich Hobelmann
Subject: Re: Comparing copyright law to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3dfj76F6teidkU1@individual.net>
Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> But plagiarism and copyright violation are not equivalent.
>
> In plagiarism, I copy your work, take your name off of it, put mine on,
> and show it to someone else (a professor; the market; whoever), telling
> them that it is my work. If I gain any benefit by plagiarizing, that
> benefit is the proceeds of fraud -- since I obtained it by lying
> (specifically, lying that I wrote the work).
>
> One can violate copyright without plagiarizing. Joe Fratboy who runs a
> Kazaa file-trading server allows his friends to download music sung by
> Mariah Carey. However, Joe does not in any regard pretend that *he*
> sang those songs. (Indeed, for purposes of indexing he's very careful
> to make sure that Mariah Carey's name is on those files; and for
> purposes of anonymity he's careful that his own name is not!) There is
> no fraud or lying going on here -- Joe does not deceive the downloader
> about the nature or provenance of the music.
He doesn't get money for it, but he distributes a copy of music
that's not his; after all he only bought one copy, so he doesn't
have a right even to give free copies to other people. (I don't
care if he himself has ten copies of the CD, on his iPod, in his
car, an his five toy computers ...)
It's distribution of something that's not yours. I think it's
pretty obvious. If you give up your ownership, of course it's ok
to sell the CD to someone else. Just don't keep copies.
> It is also possible to plagiarize without violating copyright. One may,
> for instance, plagiarize from the public domain. All of the writings of
> Benjamin Franklin are today in the public domain. If I published one of
> Franklin's essays and purported that I was the author, I would be
> defrauding the readers ... but not violating copyright, since there is
> no copyright on works in the public domain.
Well, the owner doesn't care if you distribute *that* work, since
he's dead and gone ;)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Stefan Nobis
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87mzrh4zkj.fsf@snobis.de>
Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
> If the state robbed less tax money, perhaps parents would be
> left with enough to feed their children.
Perhaps even more children will suffer, because medical assurances
are too expensive for many families and the medical bills can't be
paid? It's just not that simple.
[wellfare]
> Yes, it's so much needed that people never survived without
> it.
Yes, indeed. Indians in the jungle have some kind of wellfare
system, in the dark middle age there were wellfare systems (but
quite bad and so many people died in starvation).
Humans are social beings, like it or not, and as such they will
always build some sort of wellfare. Even USA can't live without a
wellfare system.
But look at the poor. Have they deserved their fate? Are they all
unwilling to work? Let's (actively or passively) kill all the
loosers? Or should we show some compassion and help those
who can't help themselfes?
--
Stefan.
Stefan Nobis wrote:
> Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
>
>
>>If the state robbed less tax money, perhaps parents would be
>>left with enough to feed their children.
>
>
> Perhaps even more children will suffer, because medical assurances
> are too expensive for many families and the medical bills can't be
> paid? It's just not that simple.
>
> [wellfare]
If a family can't sustain their kids, AFAIK in Germany the kids
are put in a public care institution. If they can care for their
kids, but don't, they can be prosecuted.
We're not middle-ages barbarians anymore.
>>Yes, it's so much needed that people never survived without
>>it.
>
>
> Yes, indeed. Indians in the jungle have some kind of wellfare
> system, in the dark middle age there were wellfare systems (but
> quite bad and so many people died in starvation).
They were also very unfree in those times, so that there wasn't
even remotely a free economy as today.
> Humans are social beings, like it or not, and as such they will
> always build some sort of wellfare. Even USA can't live without a
> wellfare system.
They can. Most of the poor DON'T get any welfare. I think this
is quite bad, and I think for the huge amounts of taxes US people
pay there should at least be *some* welfare (which is cheap
compared to all the military stuff they do and what not).
> But look at the poor. Have they deserved their fate? Are they all
> unwilling to work? Let's (actively or passively) kill all the
> loosers? Or should we show some compassion and help those
> who can't help themselfes?
"Some who live may deserve death, and some who are dead deserve
life. Can you give it to them?" (something like that; Gandalf in
The Lord of the Rings)
In many cases there might be people willing to do charity. Anyway
I understand that stealing money from everyone to give it to be
poor is something that can be disputed.
That said, I AM for welfare systems, just not the braindead stuff
we have in Germany (or the USA).
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Stefan Nobis
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87acnh4jp0.fsf@snobis.de>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> Anyway I understand that stealing money from everyone to give it
> to be poor is something that can be disputed.
I agree, but also can be disputed if calling taxes "stealing" is
absolut bullshit.
> That said, I AM for welfare systems, just not the braindead
> stuff we have in Germany (or the USA).
It's not that braindead. It's just no easy matter.
But cll is not the right place to discuss this and i'm no expert
and have no time to become one. So EOT for me.
--
Stefan.
Stefan Nobis wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>Anyway I understand that stealing money from everyone to give it
>>to be poor is something that can be disputed.
>
>
> I agree, but also can be disputed if calling taxes "stealing" is
> absolut bullshit.
Hm, if it's not stealing, please tell me how I can keep all money
that I would make, say, by selling my soul for a million on ebay.
My impression is that the government would take it, if needs be
with police force, from me and spend it an people who spend all
their day farting in their office chair and keeping working people
from working with their stupid bureaucracy.
>>That said, I AM for welfare systems, just not the braindead
>>stuff we have in Germany (or the USA).
>
>
> It's not that braindead. It's just no easy matter.
It could be easier and cheaper, though.
> But cll is not the right place to discuss this and i'm no expert
> and have no time to become one. So EOT for me.
Ok :)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 18:43:55 +0200, Stefan Nobis wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>> Anyway I understand that stealing money from everyone to give it
>> to be poor is something that can be disputed.
> I agree, but also can be disputed if calling taxes "stealing" is
> absolut bullshit.
It "can be disputed" that the Earth is round and orbits the sun, too.
Doesn't mean those who dispute it have an equally valid point of view.
Actually, taxing is worth then mere stealing:
The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man:
"Your money, or your life." And many, if not most, taxes are paid
under the compulsion of that threat.
The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place,
spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his
head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the
less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and
shameful.
The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger,
and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any
rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your
own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He
has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a
"protector," and that he takes men's money against their will,
merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who
feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his
peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make
such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he
leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following
you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful
"sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does
not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve
him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by
robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest
or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and
an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if
you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of
a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and
villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing
you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.
--
Give a man a match and he'll be warm for a minute, but set him on fire
and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
(setq reply-to
(concatenate 'string "Paul Foley " "<mycroft" '(··@) "actrix.gen.nz>"))
From: Stefan Nobis
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <877jikvcxe.fsf@snobis.de>
Paul Foley <···@below.invalid> (http://public.xdi.org/=pf) writes:
> It "can be disputed" that the Earth is round and orbits the sun, too.
> Doesn't mean those who dispute it have an equally valid point of view.
You mean, your point of view is not really valid? :)
You get something for your taxes (police, army, school,...), you
are free not to work and so not to pay (direct) taxes and you are
free to move to countries without taxes (or go to some lonley
island). You may even become politician and try to change the
system.
In short: Taxes have nothing in common with stealing, so it's just
bullshit to say taxes are some sort of stealing.
And, for your information, a community gets the government they
deserve. If you are so unhappy with your goverment why are not
trying to change it? Participate in politics -- things can be
changed, but only if people participate. Just lamenting changes
nothing.
That's all i have to say about this topic, so EOT for me.
--
Stefan.
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <Q6qdnRH4YIvR7e7fRVn-tQ@dls.net>
Stefan Nobis wrote:
> You get something for your taxes (police, army, school,...), you
> are free not to work and so not to pay (direct) taxes and you are
> free to move to countries without taxes (or go to some lonley
> island). You may even become politician and try to change the
> system.
Hey, this isn't comp.lang.lisp.libertarianism. Everyone,
please take it elsewhere.
Paul
Stefan Nobis <······@gmx.de> writes:
> Paul Foley <···@below.invalid> (http://public.xdi.org/=pf) writes:
>
>> It "can be disputed" that the Earth is round and orbits the sun, too.
>> Doesn't mean those who dispute it have an equally valid point of view.
>
> You mean, your point of view is not really valid? :)
>
> You get something for your taxes (police, army, school,...), you
> are free not to work and so not to pay (direct) taxes and you are
> free to move to countries without taxes (or go to some lonley
> island). You may even become politician and try to change the
> system.
>
> In short: Taxes have nothing in common with stealing, so it's just
> bullshit to say taxes are some sort of stealing.
>
> And, for your information, a community gets the government they
> deserve. If you are so unhappy with your goverment why are not
> trying to change it? Participate in politics -- things can be
> changed, but only if people participate. Just lamenting changes
> nothing.
>
> That's all i have to say about this topic, so EOT for me.
>
Well said Stefan. I find it moronic when people argue that their hard
earned money is being 'stolen' as taxes to give to the poor. People
who argue that should first bother to actually see what percentage of
tax revenue is actually paid in welfare and how much of that is paid
in the form of welfare for the unemployed - the majority of welfare
payments are for age and disability pensions etc. The percentage paid
to unemployed persons who could work is actually quite small.
Its also pretty stupid to argue against taxes on a medium based around
the Internet, which was established largely through government
funding.
Tim
.
--
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
Tim X wrote:
> Well said Stefan. I find it moronic when people argue that their hard
> earned money is being 'stolen' as taxes to give to the poor. People
> who argue that should first bother to actually see what percentage of
> tax revenue is actually paid in welfare and how much of that is paid
> in the form of welfare for the unemployed - the majority of welfare
> payments are for age and disability pensions etc. The percentage paid
> to unemployed persons who could work is actually quite small.
If taxes were spent mainly on people who *can't* work because
they're sick or old, the world would be awesome. Unfortunately,
as you say, only a small percentage (at least in the US) goes to
the poor; the rest of the taxes goes into the military and other
stuff.
Also, the point argued wasn't that the money isn't used for social
purposes, but that it's taken by force.
> Its also pretty stupid to argue against taxes on a medium based around
> the Internet, which was established largely through government
> funding.
So what? The telephone wasn't developed by government. Likewise,
the internet could have been developed privately, too.
Are you saying, just because the government actually *did*
something useful with at least part of the tax money in the past,
we all have to like taxes? Who cares if they're taken by force,
since they are used for some good purposes, right?
Allow me to take part of your money and donate it to the FSF.
After all Emacs seems to be your newsreader, so why not pay for it?
If you ask me, I'm sure many families in the US couldn't care less
if there's a powerful military, or if there is the internet. They
would like to not pay taxes in order to have enough to eat, to
afford their children a decent education in a school that actually
can afford books, to be able to afford a doctor if they need to.
Some of them might get welfare, some might not. But none of them
are happy that the government takes part of their earned money.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Stefan Nobis
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87y8azbbx0.fsf@snobis.de>
Paul Foley <···@below.invalid> (http://public.xdi.org/=pf) writes:
> It's stolen because it's taken by force; what is done with it is
> irrelevant.
Ok, one last thing (really):
You don't want any taxes, so you don't want any government, so you
don't want states so you don't really want to participate in a
community and you really want anarchy.
At least you can't be a democrat or what did you not understand
about democracy?
--
Stefan.
On Sun, 01 May 2005 10:14:35 +0200, Stefan Nobis wrote:
> Paul Foley <···@below.invalid> (http://public.xdi.org/=pf) writes:
>> It's stolen because it's taken by force; what is done with it is
>> irrelevant.
> Ok, one last thing (really):
> You don't want any taxes, so you don't want any government, so you
> don't want states so you don't really want to participate in a
> community and you really want anarchy.
Yes, I'm an anarchist (Rothbardian/Hoppean, not the socialist
variety). But you need to check your assumptions: "don't want to
participate in a community"? Community is an outgrowth of the
(anarchical) free market (trade = division of labour); it's you
statists who are anti-community.
> At least you can't be a democrat or what did you not understand
> about democracy?
Correct. Democracy is one of the three evil forms of government,
don't you know. That's why it's been universally hated, until
the recent century of socialism and death.
--
Give a man a match and he'll be warm for a minute, but set him on fire
and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
(setq reply-to
(concatenate 'string "Paul Foley " "<mycroft" '(··@) "actrix.gen.nz>"))
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
> Are you saying, just because the government actually *did* something
> useful with at least part of the tax money in the past, we all have to
> like taxes? Who cares if they're taken by force, since they are used
> for some good purposes, right?
No thats not what I'm saying. For a start, I don't agree with the
basis of the argument that taxes are taken by force. The government is
not some anonymous entity which just appeared and started demanding
taxes like a highway man. The government and tax levels are set by the
citizens elected representatives. The people vote in the government
and give them certain rights over them - including the right to
require the citizens to pay tax. My point about the Internet was that
I found it ironic we were arguing about the legitimacy of tax when it
was these tax dollars which got the Internet started in the first
place. You might argue someone else whould have done it, but I doubt
it - the Internet is one of those things which nobody ever thought
would be profitable until after it had all started, plus given the
complexities and investment required to get it started, I doubt any
non-government body would have taken the chance.
If someone was providing a service which you knew required a payment,
would you still consider it stealing when they took that payment from
you? How is the tax diffeent - is it simply because you feel you were
never asked? Surely thats what the right to vote is all about? If you
don't like paying the taxes or the level of tax, either move countries
or get involved politically and make tax the issue for the next
election. However, if you don't want to pay tax, your going to have to
find some little tax haven hidden away somewhere - you won't have to
pay tax, but you probably won't have any income either.
> Allow me to take part of your money and donate it to the FSF. After
> all Emacs seems to be your newsreader, so why not pay for it?
If my government decided to support the FSF with financial grants, I'd
be more than happy for a part of my taxes to be used in that way. I'd
certainly be happier for my government to give money to the FSF than
to private companies to run detention centres for people fleeing a
life of starvation, torture etc as is currently happening here in
Australia. It is for this very reason that when I first started using
emacs I purchased a print version of the manual from them. I don't use
emacs because its free - I use it because its the best tool for what I
do. If they wanted payment, I'd have no problems paying for it.
>
> If you ask me, I'm sure many families in the US couldn't care less if
> there's a powerful military, or if there is the internet. They would
> like to not pay taxes in order to have enough to eat, to afford their
> children a decent education in a school that actually can afford
> books, to be able to afford a doctor if they need to. Some of them
> might get welfare, some might not. But none of them are happy that
> the government takes part of their earned money.
I think this is a sign of shallow thinking. The problem is people have
gotten so use to the services governments provide with the taxes they
take they don't even recognise what their taxes do. Its made worse
when people 'blame' the homeless, mentally ill or poor for this. Why
shouldn't we all pay for the services the government provides -
including the service of governing itself. While some might like to
argue they don't use any government service, thats just rubbish - we
all use government services at some point.
While its true governments could always allocate the funds more
efficiently and personally, I'd prefer to see more spent on health and
education, the requirement that you have to pay tax is reasonable if
you want to be a citizen and benefit form what that government does.
Personally, I don't have a problem with taxes. In fact, I think paying
some tax is a social responsability we should all do willingly. What I
do have a problem with is
- The number of extremely wealthy people who are able to avoid
paying their fair share of taxes because of either their
position and influence or because they can afford to pay
lawyers and accountants to find doddgy tax loops. Their tax
burden is passed onto the less fortunate lower wage
earners. For example, according to information released here,
I pay more tax than Rupert Murdock!
- The number of companies who are able to dodge their share of
taxes by mvoing money around into different countries
etc. Ummm, Rupert's name leaps to mind again.
- Government waste and government expenditure which has been
guided by pressure from industry and 'influencial' donations
etc. again, rupert jumps to mind!
- Excessively high levels of taxation. There is a limit to what
I will accept.
Having said that, I do support anyones efforts to reduce their tax in
a lawful way - this is also your right.
Maybe we are better off here in Australia than the US. We have (had?)
and excellent public health system (its being run down now - which is
a pity) and we had a great free education system (including
University - which unfortunately now is no longer free). We certainly
had a lot fewer (or at least visible) homelss or poor begging on the
streets than I saw in my visits to NY and LA. (though I have to admit,
we could do a lot more for aboriginal communities).
I'm not arguing that governments use our hard earned taxes well -
there is always room for improvement. However, I dispute the point
taxes are taken by force - tax is part of the mutual obligation of
being part of a democracy.
Again, so off topic - I will not contribute to this thread further. If
you feel you really want to continue, feel free to e-mail me
directly. I may or may not respond depending on the content and my
mood!
Tim
--
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
Tim X wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>Are you saying, just because the government actually *did* something
>>useful with at least part of the tax money in the past, we all have to
>>like taxes? Who cares if they're taken by force, since they are used
>>for some good purposes, right?
>
>
> No thats not what I'm saying. For a start, I don't agree with the
> basis of the argument that taxes are taken by force. The government is
> not some anonymous entity which just appeared and started demanding
> taxes like a highway man. The government and tax levels are set by the
> citizens elected representatives. The people vote in the government
> and give them certain rights over them - including the right to
THEY can't give the government the right to take stuff from ME.
Only I could do that. In fact I'm willing (unlike Paul) to pay
taxes to have a court and a police to protect me from anarchy.
But I don't agree to pay for a military, or to have my future kids
be carried to some school I might not want them to go to AND in
addition be forced to PAY for that school. I don't think it's ok
to force people (in Germany) to serve the army. I seriously
considered going to jail, but in the end I did the alternative
service at a youth hostel; but it still was forced labor. That's
why I'm one year older than people in other countries or girls in
my own country who are FREE to finish school and then study at
college.
> require the citizens to pay tax. My point about the Internet was that
> I found it ironic we were arguing about the legitimacy of tax when it
> was these tax dollars which got the Internet started in the first
> place. You might argue someone else whould have done it, but I doubt
That doesn't legitimate taxation in any way. Sure, I'm grateful
for the net...
> it - the Internet is one of those things which nobody ever thought
> would be profitable until after it had all started, plus given the
> complexities and investment required to get it started, I doubt any
> non-government body would have taken the chance.
Without taxation there would have been a LOT of money in private
hands to invest in other things. What they invest in, of course,
is their choice. It isn't forced on them.
Allow me to take your money and spend it on some probably really
useful research, ok?
> If someone was providing a service which you knew required a payment,
> would you still consider it stealing when they took that payment from
> you? How is the tax diffeent - is it simply because you feel you were
If I never asked for that service, I wouldn't pay. So, yes, that
would be stealing.
> never asked? Surely thats what the right to vote is all about? If you
I didn't vote for all those taxes we have.
> don't like paying the taxes or the level of tax, either move countries
They all steal. Where can I move? And why should I? Why can't I
just buy a big farm, and live there in peace without people
sending soldiers to steal stuff from me, or carry me to the army
service and stuff like that?
> or get involved politically and make tax the issue for the next
> election. However, if you don't want to pay tax, your going to have to
> find some little tax haven hidden away somewhere - you won't have to
> pay tax, but you probably won't have any income either.
I'm trying to, but the majority always forces the minority to do
stuff they don't want to. It's like schoolkids: the stronger ones
beat up the weaker ones.
>>Allow me to take part of your money and donate it to the FSF. After
>>all Emacs seems to be your newsreader, so why not pay for it?
>
>
> If my government decided to support the FSF with financial grants, I'd
> be more than happy for a part of my taxes to be used in that way. I'd
You. Then feel free to donate. I don't think it's right to have
60% vote that the other 40% are also forced to donate THEIR taxes
to the FSF!
> certainly be happier for my government to give money to the FSF than
> to private companies to run detention centres for people fleeing a
> life of starvation, torture etc as is currently happening here in
> Australia. It is for this very reason that when I first started using
That's why taxes are evil. The state does all kinds of crap with
your money.
> emacs I purchased a print version of the manual from them. I don't use
> emacs because its free - I use it because its the best tool for what I
> do. If they wanted payment, I'd have no problems paying for it.
> I think this is a sign of shallow thinking. The problem is people have
> gotten so use to the services governments provide with the taxes they
> take they don't even recognise what their taxes do. Its made worse
If you don't know where your taxes go, that's a sign, that they
shouldn't really be there in the first place. Hell, it's YOUR
money! Don't let them waste it without telling you where it goes!
> when people 'blame' the homeless, mentally ill or poor for this. Why
> shouldn't we all pay for the services the government provides -
> including the service of governing itself. While some might like to
> argue they don't use any government service, thats just rubbish - we
> all use government services at some point.
What service would that be? *lol*
Not governing (compared to now) would make everyone's life a lot
easier.
> While its true governments could always allocate the funds more
> efficiently and personally, I'd prefer to see more spent on health and
> education, the requirement that you have to pay tax is reasonable if
> you want to be a citizen and benefit form what that government does.
If there were no taxes, you could donate to health and edu as much
as you wanted.
> Personally, I don't have a problem with taxes. In fact, I think paying
> some tax is a social responsability we should all do willingly. What I
Yes, but only for the necessities of society: to protect us from
violence and law-breaking (theft etc.).
> do have a problem with is
>
> - The number of extremely wealthy people who are able to avoid
> paying their fair share of taxes because of either their
> position and influence or because they can afford to pay
> lawyers and accountants to find doddgy tax loops. Their tax
> burden is passed onto the less fortunate lower wage
> earners. For example, according to information released here,
> I pay more tax than Rupert Murdock!
True. All people should have the same taxation, say, 20%.
Everything else isn't fair.
> - Government waste and government expenditure which has been
> guided by pressure from industry and 'influencial' donations
> etc. again, rupert jumps to mind!
They take your money and give it to their business friends. Tough
s***!
See why I'm against the state as it is?
> - Excessively high levels of taxation. There is a limit to what
> I will accept.
My limit would be 25% for everybody. Everything higher than that
is too much.
> I'm not arguing that governments use our hard earned taxes well -
If it's something I could do myself, I don't see why the
government should take it in the first place. I can donate to the
homeless or Greenpeace myself, thank you!
> there is always room for improvement. However, I dispute the point
> taxes are taken by force - tax is part of the mutual obligation of
> being part of a democracy.
Everything in democracy is forced on the minorities by the
majority, unless there is an opt-out option.
> Again, so off topic - I will not contribute to this thread further. If
> you feel you really want to continue, feel free to e-mail me
> directly. I may or may not respond depending on the content and my
> mood!
Please give me a valid email then (if you respond to this). I
don't want to annoy the c.l.l any further.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Stefan Nobis
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87is254r8v.fsf@snobis.de>
Paul Foley <···@below.invalid> (http://public.xdi.org/=pf) writes:
> If the state robbed less tax money
If that's all you have to say to this issue, don't bother me. I'm
not interested in this sort of nonsense.
--
Stefan.
Stefan Nobis <······@gmx.de> writes:
> Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
>
>> If the state robbed less tax money, perhaps parents would be
>> left with enough to feed their children.
>
> Perhaps even more children will suffer, because medical assurances
> are too expensive for many families and the medical bills can't be
> paid? It's just not that simple.
Look at how software comes cheap or even gratis. Programmers all
arround the world are investing computer resources and time to write
programs they give. Why? Because there's almost 0 state intervention
in programming. In most places, you don't have state inspectors
coming to see whether you've used the right compiler, whether you've
not run the right tests in double-blind, or whether you're distribuing
a program that has more bugs than character per line.
If the state left the medical and pharmaceutical profession free as we
are, medecine and drugs would be as free as software. Of course,
there would not be corporations so bigs, there would be much more
smaller competiting enterprises.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
In deep sleep hear sound,
Cat vomit hairball somewhere.
Will find in morning.
Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
>Look at how software comes cheap or even gratis. Programmers all
>arround the world are investing computer resources and time to write
>programs they give. Why? Because there's almost 0 state intervention
>in programming. In most places, you don't have state inspectors
>coming to see whether you've used the right compiler, whether you've
>not run the right tests in double-blind, or whether you're distribuing
>a program that has more bugs than character per line.
>
>If the state left the medical and pharmaceutical profession free as we
>are, medecine and drugs would be as free as software. Of course,
>there would not be corporations so bigs, there would be much more
>smaller competiting enterprises.
What complete and utter nonsense is that? If your web browser
crashes, you won't get killed (normally). If the new cheap medication
you bought kills you on the spot, you can't go and say "blimey, what a
shitty quality. I won't buy from _that_ guy any longer."
Quality control for food and medicine by the government is something
_I_ surely wouldn't give up.
mkb.
Matthias Buelow wrote:
> What complete and utter nonsense is that? If your web browser
> crashes, you won't get killed (normally). If the new cheap medication
> you bought kills you on the spot, you can't go and say "blimey, what a
> shitty quality. I won't buy from _that_ guy any longer."
That's why (a) people would advertise formal testing used in their
products and (b) maybe people wouldn't swallow all pills that came
their way in the first place. It would also appear in newspapers
fairly quickly. Remember that one medication half a year (or a
year?) ago, which was all over the world's news just because it
slighly increased risk of heart attacks, even though it (IIRC)
lowered cholesterol and thus kept many people from just rotting
away in the first place?
> Quality control for food and medicine by the government is something
> _I_ surely wouldn't give up.
Yes, in the end I agree that there need be standards. But that's
different from having huge regulations.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Quality control for food and medicine by the government is something
> _I_ surely wouldn't give up.
You're getting what you're asking.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we. -- Georges W. Bush
From: Karl A. Krueger
Subject: Re: Comparing politics to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <d4tirj$197$1@baldur.whoi.edu>
Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've never seen a freemarket believer admit that copyright is an
> anti-freemarket state distortion.
> http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.society.labor-unions/msg/d9701de5e7a76627?hl=en
That's just because Austrian-school economists don't get a lot of press:
http://www.mises.org/blog/archives/001771.asp
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu> { s/example/whoi/ }
Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I've never seen a freemarket believer admit that copyright is an
> > anti-freemarket state distortion.
> >
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.society.labor-unions/msg/d9701de5e7a76627?hl=en
>
> That's just because Austrian-school economists don't get a lot of
press:
>
> http://www.mises.org/blog/archives/001771.asp
I deleted that post from Google right after posting it, because I
omitted something -- I meant freemarket believers who make their money
from proprietary, copyrighted software.
I hear the nice thing about Austrian-schoolers and (I believe) the Cato
Institute is they're internally pretty consistent. So I'm told, at
least.
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
>
>>If the state robbed less tax money, perhaps parents would be left
>>with enough to feed their children. After all their grand parents
>>could feed four times more children. But the difference is that
>>100 years ago the tax rates were less than 5% and now they're more
>>than 50%.
>
>
> American politician Ralph Nader also believes in very low taxes -- but
> with loopholes closed. He was interviewed by arch-conservative Pat
> Buchanan:
> http://www.amconmag.com/2004_06_21/cover.html
Interesting. As he says, he's more on the conservative side, and
against corporatism. While I don't share his protectionist views,
in many cases he's right. Compared to Kerry or Bush I'd have
voted for him (I don't know the Green and Libertarian candidates)
if I were US citizen and if he'd have had a chance.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
>>>>> "TJG" == Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
[...]
TJG> I've never seen a freemarket believer admit that copyright is
TJG> an anti-freemarket state distortion. [...]
Huh?
http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/004055.html
Now you have.
cheers,
BM
Bulent Murtezaoglu wrote:
> >>>>> "TJG" == Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> [...]
> TJG> I've never seen a freemarket believer admit that copyright
is
> TJG> an anti-freemarket state distortion. [...]
>
> Huh?
>
> http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/004055.html
>
> Now you have.
I deleted my post from google before you posted that, partly because I
somehow left out the part about the freemarket believer making their
money from copyrighted software. ;)
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
>So for example, law degrees should incur huge college debts, so people
>have to work for big law firms and wealthy clients, rather than wasting
>their time on the poor.
Here (Germany) lawyers are not allowed to work for free. If they do,
they will get thrown out of their Law Society. That's a start
already. (Don't know how it is in the US.)
mkb.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> A lot of people who make free software think they will end up being able
> to consult on the product when done, but I bet that in general it is rare
> that the person who makes something gets to do that unless the product is
> big and hard to understand. Being in the consultant business is a tough
> thing because you have to have the right resources to respond to arbitrary
> needs. In general, that means that big organizations can be consultants
> but little guys will be whomped because they can't keep their plate
> statistically full and so they have to charge a premium rate to cover down
> time, while a big organization can have enough things going at once that it
> can rely on statistical degrees of availability on this or that project and
> shift people among.
That's why I don't really like what IBM is doing with free
software. They pay a handful of programmers, and profit from
hundreds out there, that don't get paid anything for their work,
but sacrifice their free-time instead, some for fun, some maybe in
hope of a glorious programming career that might not happen.
If software is *really good* and easy to use, you don't need
consulting. Sendmail can sell consulting, because their software
is a complex lump, that is: not nearly good enough. Web servers
and application servers sell consulting, because they are hard to
install and hard to use (Java, J2EE etc.).
So you can't make any money on making a video game, or a really
good application, open-source. There will be nobody who needs
your consulting. It's sad that ESR and others don't seem to ever
consider this.
> What I lament MOST, in fact, is that the politics of the world are screwed
> up. There are some very generous and thoughtful people in CS who understand
> "process" and "how to count" and stuff like that in ways that would allow
> them to confront issues like overpopulation, global warming, fair voting,
> and other important issues with more than a shrug and an "I don't see a
> problem here" like we get from our all-too-comfortable and not-so-generous
> leaders today. If those people in CS who have new ideas about how to make
> the world work had money, they might make some changes to the world. But
> instead they are breeding a whole generation and a whole industry of
> economically disempowered people. And the people who are making the money
> instead are laughing their way to the bank that all they have to do is
> provide "free pacifiers" to these smart, valuable people and they'll work
> for free.
I think that in many ways operating systems are analogous to
global polito-economic systems. A small kernel is better and
easier to manage. The more processes run in user-space (in the
free market), the more they can be improved by independent parties
(people, not political parties :D). A difference is that most
trade doesn't need kernel-traps: people trade just among each
other; state intervention is only needed when someone breaks the
law (exception, fault).
I'm afraid that too many people, especially non-CSers, will think
I'm totally nuts when I should ever publicly state these comparisons.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>consulting. Sendmail can sell consulting, because their software is a
>complex lump, that is: not nearly good enough. Web servers and
Having done a couple mail servers in my time (with different server
software) and hence read up a bit on the subject in the last couple
years, I have to dispute this. They sell consulting because
processing mail is often a very complicated issue. The software
simply tracks the real world. (I'm not going to indulge myself into
discussions about sendmail's configuration, and especially the
perceived incomprehensiveness of its configuration language here.
This would be way off-topic.)
mkb.
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> Jon Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> >
> > If you just want to be a consumer of computing-related goods and
> > services, then don't worry. "Free" software is your friend (so
> > far).
>
> Right, exactly. A lot of people (and I hate to appear age-ist about this,
> but I still think it's mostly young people who have not lived long enough
> to have to have run into desperate shortages of money for sicknesses,
> vacations, family emergencies, personal illness or disability, unrelated
> financial problems, changes in market making their "skills" less valuable,
> changes in the global market making their "money" less valuable, etc.) seem
> to think that the problem is merely "making things I want to use cheaper
> to get".
>
> What's sad is that people think I'm complaining just for me. I'm also
> saying "I think many of you on the other side of this are being deceived
> and may come to regret your position later". I went through a very generous
> time in my college days myself. I'm just grown up now. I see things
> differently.
Ahh, the old "kids these days" argument.
Making things I want to use cheaper means I don't need to spend as much
to get them and I can get on with what I really want to do. I can be
more valuable for my clients because I can roll a server to do most
anything they want using Linux and whatever junk is in the closet. By
making it easier and cheaper to build infrastructure I can reduce its
cost which is of direct benefit to the people paying my salary. If it
undercuts the market for your neato software you're trying to sell,
you'd better fancy it up to make it worth my while or I'll go elsewhere.
This is why I buy Solaris for server infrastructure thats designated as
"important" and why I buy Lispworks because it brings a pile of stuff to
the table that I like and it saves me time. But lots of times Linux and
CLISP will do just fine. Must I buy Solaris and Lispworks for all my
server and Lisp programming needs?
I fail to see how I am deceived and how my skills are made less valuable
by using open source where it makes sense to. In some of your other
posts you argue that some of our current social debates are
oversimplistic, I'd argue that you're being oversimplistic in your
characterization of open source.
Gregm
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uhdhqqx8p.fsf@nhplace.com>
Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
> I fail to see how I am deceived and how my skills are made less valuable
> by using open source where it makes sense to. In some of your other
> posts you argue that some of our current social debates are
> oversimplistic, I'd argue that you're being oversimplistic in your
> characterization of open source.
Because in my posts, I freely admit there are counterexamples, but am trying
to point to that there are also problems.
In the posts of those speaking to me, they seem to think the counterexamples
are irrelevant and that by pointing to the success of one, I must be wrong.
I claim I am not oversimplifying because I am not saying my problem is
everyone's problem. I am merely saying it is a substantial problem of some.
Do you think it's a substantial problem of some, also?
Do you believe your success is a countexample to the possibility that
others do not succeed?
Do you believe your success is representative of computer science in general?
I haven't tried to trivialize the success of some people. I've tried
to say that this success appears to me not to be shared as generally and
evenly as is sometimes claimed. In what sense is that an oversimplification?
Also, it is extremely hard to talk about a large problem in a way that
gives anyone any sense of gestalt about it. Some degree of simplification
is needed to get any handle on it. Bush talks about having improved life
in the US. Do you think he is oversimplifying by combining everyone into a
single number, or do you think people who are complaining there are still
ill effects of current policies and more things that need to be done are
oversimplifying by complaining that things are not going so well for them?
The term "oversimplification" is often used in a kind of pejorative
way to say "you have no right to speak in abstract, round terms". Or
"you're leaving out something substantial". When I've already
acknolwedged there are good effects and that I'm tryingto speak to the
less good effects, what am I leaving out? In your remarks, by
contrast, where have you acknowledged the things that you might be
leaving out in your account?
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
>
> > I fail to see how I am deceived and how my skills are made less valuable
> > by using open source where it makes sense to. In some of your other
> > posts you argue that some of our current social debates are
> > oversimplistic, I'd argue that you're being oversimplistic in your
> > characterization of open source.
>
> Because in my posts, I freely admit there are counterexamples, but am trying
> to point to that there are also problems.
Problems, sure- but you're claiming your age and changed views give you
a superior understanding of the consequences of open source and I don't
think thats necessarily so.
> In the posts of those speaking to me, they seem to think the counterexamples
> are irrelevant and that by pointing to the success of one, I must be wrong.
>
> I claim I am not oversimplifying because I am not saying my problem is
> everyone's problem. I am merely saying it is a substantial problem of some.
>
> Do you think it's a substantial problem of some, also?
Yes. However the problem comes in evaluating how big a group the "some"
is and how substantial the problem is for them.
> Do you believe your success is a countexample to the possibility that
> others do not succeed?
I'm not sure I understand what this question is getting at.
> Do you believe your success is representative of computer science in general?
There is no way Yes or No can adequately constrast any experience of
mine to compsci in general. Compsci is far to complicated for my
experience to have much relation beyond the fact that I earn a living
using it, and maybe hopefully I contribute some little bit to it as I'm
able.
> I haven't tried to trivialize the success of some people. I've tried
> to say that this success appears to me not to be shared as generally and
> evenly as is sometimes claimed. In what sense is that an oversimplification?
I don't think this is an oversimplification.
> Also, it is extremely hard to talk about a large problem in a way that
> gives anyone any sense of gestalt about it. Some degree of simplification
> is needed to get any handle on it. Bush talks about having improved life
> in the US. Do you think he is oversimplifying by combining everyone into a
> single number, or do you think people who are complaining there are still
> ill effects of current policies and more things that need to be done are
> oversimplifying by complaining that things are not going so well for them?
I agree with the former alternative. OTOH you were claiming that age
has changed your perspective and the "young" were more or less deluding
themselves and risking if not actually diluting the value of their
skills.
> The term "oversimplification" is often used in a kind of pejorative
> way to say "you have no right to speak in abstract, round terms". Or
> "you're leaving out something substantial". When I've already
> acknolwedged there are good effects and that I'm tryingto speak to the
> less good effects, what am I leaving out? In your remarks, by
> contrast, where have you acknowledged the things that you might be
> leaving out in your account?
I think you're leaving out the fact that many people enhance the value
of their skills simply by virtue of having reasonably functional open
source alternatives at their disposal. I clearly remember the Novell
3.x and OS/2 days where everything cost hundreds if not thousands of
dollars, OS, compiler, api kits, and thats just the DOS side of the
house. Now I can roll a server to do much more on the same hardware
those old operating systems ran for next to nothing, if not actually
nothing. The savings of those kinds of expenditures is a huge win in
the IT/consulting segments of the computer racket.
But as you allude, one of the costs of open source is it makes the
independent software developer work a whole lot harder just to stay
afloat. I'm sure there are market niches where independent developers
can & do survive but once the niches get large enough the big money
moves in and the independent people are pushed out- and thats the case
regardless of open source and probably regardless of industry.
I am making a distinction between an independent software developer and
an independent consultant, my remarks applying to the former.
So when I work on an open source program in my spare time and contribute
it my work to the benefit of others who might find it helps them do
their jobs, I still don't understand how I am risking deluding myself
and in some way diluting the value of my skills.
If the argument is that my doing so takes away jobs from for-profit
sofware developers, then I'll reply, "Tough, its my time to do with as I
see fit. Show me software that makes me want to buy it and I will
because I have things I need to do and I won't hesitate to pay for
things that really save me time and effort." I quite appreciate the
fact that open source gives me the opportunity to choose.
Or, if the argument is that my time working on open source project could
be spent writing software to sell and is therefore wasted in some sense,
then I'll reply, "I make my own money and pay my own bills and you have
no idea about my personal economy so mind your own business."
Gregm
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ubr7y48wp.fsf@nhplace.com>
Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
>
> Problems, sure- but you're claiming your age and changed views give you
> a superior understanding of the consequences of open source and I don't
> think thats necessarily so.
Superior adds a tone that I did not add. I am not trying to make an
"i'm better than you" point. I'm trying to make an "if you listen, you
might save yourself an aggravation" point. The former is a form of
arrogance, the latter is a form of helpfulness.
> If the argument is that my doing so takes away jobs from for-profit
> sofware developers, then I'll reply, "Tough, its my time to do with as I
> see fit. Show me software that makes me want to buy it and I will
> because I have things I need to do and I won't hesitate to pay for
> things that really save me time and effort." I quite appreciate the
> fact that open source gives me the opportunity to choose.
What one learns from experience is that life is a kind of Back to the
Future, where just as Marty McFly comes back at the end to see his
past self from a distance, and to differently understand his own
actions, you may ultimately find that the "you" and the "me" in this
"I'll do as I please, tough on you" rant are not necessarily different
identities... Sometimes you see yourself so much in others that you
feel a need to change the future. And sometimes, when people answer as
you do with an "I don't need your opinion" you find yourself chuckling
and saying "So the sci-fi time travel writers were right who said that
even if you try to go back and change the past, it will resist such change."
> Or, if the argument is that my time working on open source project could
> be spent writing software to sell and is therefore wasted in some sense,
> then I'll reply, "I make my own money and pay my own bills and you have
> no idea about my personal economy so mind your own business."
You seem to me to be getting awfully defensive. I'm not trying to
make this personal. If this doesn't apply to you, or even if it does
and you don't care to listen, why is it so hard to just leave me alone
to speak to those who might hear my words differently? Why are you
speaking back to me and not instead speaking to them and saying "Kent
is a false prophet. Listen to me and your life will be great." I
suspect the reason is that you're not as sure you're right and so
don't want to get into that. Perhaps you know it has worked for you,
at least so far, and perhaps you are not worried, at least so far.
But maybe you aren't confident enough that it would work for someone
else to come out with a clear statement of advocacy, so instead you find
it a useful compromise to criticize my criticisms. Kind of a backhanded
endorsement of free software's universality without coming out too strongly
in explcit endorsement of it as a panacea, which is the only thing I've
criticized--its use as a panacea.
Say what you want about me, but my reputation is place substantially on the
line by speaking out in opposition to these well-accepted truths. I don't
do it to make friends, and I don't do it expecting that I will be deluged
in accolades. I speak on it because I perceive it has affected me, and I
suspect it will affect others, and because I think dialog has never injured
a good idea. So if I'm wrong, there's little lost but my good name. Which
in the grander scheme of things the world can afford. But if I'm right that
this deserves a fair airing, I would say it's far from getting it.
Incidentally, just to add to the timeline I was referring to, at one point
when Stallman was starting out and a lot less popular, I remember defending
him to a friend, and saying something like "Someone has to speak with an
alternate point of view. I don't know if I agree with him, but if he weren't
there, maybe it would be me having to say those things." Now that he has
spoken, and things have happened, my personal considered opinion is that
it was the wrong way to go. But it's partly that I have evolved my point of
view that makes me worried for those of you who haven't lived through the
experiences that led me to do so.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
>
> What one learns from experience is that life is a kind of Back to the
> Future, where just as Marty McFly comes back at the end to see his
> past self from a distance, and to differently understand his own
> actions, you may ultimately find that the "you" and the "me" in this
> "I'll do as I please, tough on you" rant are not necessarily different
> identities... Sometimes you see yourself so much in others that you
> feel a need to change the future. And sometimes, when people answer as
> you do with an "I don't need your opinion" you find yourself chuckling
> and saying "So the sci-fi time travel writers were right who said that
> even if you try to go back and change the past, it will resist such change."
>
As I get older life just seems to be one awareness plateau after another. Every
so often I "wake up" only to discover how asleep at the wheel I have been.
Of course this will be the last time I wake up ;).
Wade
On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 04:33:53 GMT, Wade Humeniuk wrote:
> As I get older life just seems to be one awareness plateau after another. Every
> so often I "wake up" only to discover how asleep at the wheel I have been.
> Of course this will be the last time I wake up ;).
I'd like to die quietly in my sleep, like my grandfather.
Not screaming in terror like his passengers.
--
The only way to succeed in business is to satisfy a need for a profit.
If you satisfy a need at no profit, that's philanthropy. If you
satisfy no need at a profit, then you're a crook.
-- Renn Zaphiropoulos
(setq reply-to
(concatenate 'string "Paul Foley " "<mycroft" '(··@) "actrix.gen.nz>"))
Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
> If the argument is that my doing so takes away jobs from for-profit
> sofware developers, then I'll reply, "Tough, its my time to do with
> as I see fit. Show me software that makes me want to buy it and I
> will because I have things I need to do and I won't hesitate to pay
> for things that really save me time and effort."
You could also go out in your free time and poison forests, or go
volunteer to work for free in a union shop, giving the managers the
impression that they don't need to pay the other workers so much. You
could build a car factory and give away the goods, destroying an
industry by your goodwill. One person's innocent altruism is another
person's dumping.
> Or, if the argument is that my time working on open source project
> could be spent writing software to sell and is therefore wasted in
> some sense, then I'll reply, "I make my own money and pay my own
> bills and you have no idea about my personal economy so mind your
> own business."
Yes, but can you make those choices without endangering others'
business? Do we have a right to protect our means of earning a living?
I'm having trouble thinking of another profession or group of people
with a rare skill that aspires to give its work away to
strangers. This tendency isn't even philanthropy associated with an
accomplished professional at the end of a successful career; rather,
as Mr. Pitman points out, it's more common among those starting out
with a would-be career ahead of them at stake.
In my time thus far as a programmer I have both benefited from and
contributed back to several free software projects, but it's only
recently that I've started to wonder about not just the personal
benefits but the costs to the profession.
--
Steven E. Harris
"Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> writes:
> Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
>
> > If the argument is that my doing so takes away jobs from for-profit
> > sofware developers, then I'll reply, "Tough, its my time to do with
> > as I see fit. Show me software that makes me want to buy it and I
> > will because I have things I need to do and I won't hesitate to pay
> > for things that really save me time and effort."
>
> You could also go out in your free time and poison forests, or go
> volunteer to work for free in a union shop, giving the managers the
> impression that they don't need to pay the other workers so much. You
> could build a car factory and give away the goods, destroying an
> industry by your goodwill. One person's innocent altruism is another
> person's dumping.
Give me a break. I could go out and clean the trash out of the stream
behind my house (which I do a couple times a year). Should I bill the
city for my services and refuse to do it anymore if they don't pay for
my time?
> > Or, if the argument is that my time working on open source project
> > could be spent writing software to sell and is therefore wasted in
> > some sense, then I'll reply, "I make my own money and pay my own
> > bills and you have no idea about my personal economy so mind your
> > own business."
>
> Yes, but can you make those choices without endangering others'
> business? Do we have a right to protect our means of earning a living?
Yes, however the "other's businesses" (presumably for-profit independent
sofware developers) had better be prepared to compete and offer me a
product that makes me want it. Why should I accept software that isn't
forced to compete out to the limits of technical prowess- which is what
you're suggesting.
I'm not prepared to protect means of making livings by supressing
competition. Why should compsci and IT be spared the sometimes
iniquitous competition by those who do it faster and cheaper and
sometimes just well enough? Are you really suggesting that people are
in some way owed their preference of the means by which they earn a
living? Manual machinists were put out of business by the advent of CNC
technology, should CNC have been suppressed to protect their chosen
jobs?
> I'm having trouble thinking of another profession or group of people
> with a rare skill that aspires to give its work away to
> strangers. This tendency isn't even philanthropy associated with an
> accomplished professional at the end of a successful career; rather,
> as Mr. Pitman points out, it's more common among those starting out
> with a would-be career ahead of them at stake.
What about doctors and lawyers who volunteer their professional
services? Are they somehow detracting from their respective industries
and devaluing the services?
compsci and IT are hardly rare skills, but like any other industry
highly skilled practitioners are more scarce. Could one of you please
tell me how contributing to open source puts a career at stake?
> In my time thus far as a programmer I have both benefited from and
> contributed back to several free software projects, but it's only
> recently that I've started to wonder about not just the personal
> benefits but the costs to the profession.
I contribute to open source projects because I benefit from them and its
a good way to return the favor. My job would be much more expensive
without open source and more than likely I'd be a lot less productive.
I also buy software from the for-profits when the functionality they
offer makes it worth my while. How does this cost the profession?
Gregm
Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
> I could go out and clean the trash out of the stream behind my house
> (which I do a couple times a year). Should I bill the city for my
> services and refuse to do it anymore if they don't pay for my time?
Practically, no, but in the abstract, yes. Someone is polluting that
stream, causing harm. You are cleaning the stream, undoing the
harm. Money would be a fine way to transfer the burden back from
do-gooder to polluter. You know who you are, and you could tell the
city you're the one cleaning the stream. If only the city could figure
out who the polluters are, they could send them your bill.
> Why should I accept software that isn't forced to compete out to the
> limits of technical prowess- which is what you're suggesting.
I can't argue for you to accept subpar software; that wasn't what I
was suggesting. Competing to make something better makes
sense. Planning to give it away to create that advantage is a less
obvious tactic.
> Why should compsci and IT be spared the sometimes iniquitous
> competition by those who do it faster and cheaper and sometimes just
> well enough?
Is it really competition if the competitors are working for free? That
changes the whole game, much like fighting with someone with nothing
to lose. Why are those other people so willing to work for free? Where
are they getting their money from?
If, say, the gifted competitor is living at home with the parents and
has no expenses, he would still do better to sell his creation, even
if at a slightly lower price than the dominant competitor. As
Mr. Pitman explained, giving it away destroys value in the work.
> Are you really suggesting that people are in some way owed their
> preference of the means by which they earn a living?
Yes, provided that the group can form a consensus. To use an example
related to one you raise below, a doctor won't work for free unless
motivated by some unusual circumstances. He has years of training to
pay for, liability insurance, office overhead, and something more
subtle: pride in the profession.
If some maverick doctor decides to undercut the competition and work
for free or even just half the going rate, he won't put much price
pressure on any other doctors. He can only help so many people, and
the rest of the doctors will dismiss him in contempt of the
profession. That one doctor can't destroy that collective pride.
It's that collective pride that I find lacking in the current
programming community. I can't even call it a profession, but I wish I
could.
> Manual machinists were put out of business by the advent of CNC
> technology, should CNC have been suppressed to protect their chosen
> jobs?
No, but the example is not equivalent. We're not talking about
programming being superseded by some better technology. We're talking
about people doing the same work but not asking to be paid,
effectively destroying or eroding a would-be profession.
> What about doctors and lawyers who volunteer their professional
> services? Are they somehow detracting from their respective
> industries and devaluing the services?
No, because this kind of pro bono work is the exception and is
recognized within those professions as a special category of work,
almost like a tax that some are more eager to participate in. And, as
I argued above, the rest of the doctors and lawyers don't have to
lower their rates because some pro bono service is available. Rather,
they likely have to raise them.
[...]
> How does this cost the profession?
It makes it difficult to earn a living doing the same work you are
willing to do for free. It's not so much the giving it away as the
training the would-be customers to expect such philanthropy that hurts
your peers.
--
Steven E. Harris
"Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> writes:
> Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
>
> > I could go out and clean the trash out of the stream behind my house
> > (which I do a couple times a year). Should I bill the city for my
> > services and refuse to do it anymore if they don't pay for my time?
>
> Practically, no, but in the abstract, yes. Someone is polluting that
> stream, causing harm. You are cleaning the stream, undoing the
> harm. Money would be a fine way to transfer the burden back from
> do-gooder to polluter. You know who you are, and you could tell the
> city you're the one cleaning the stream. If only the city could figure
> out who the polluters are, they could send them your bill.
The polluters are whomever drops something out of their car window
blocks away and the rain washes it all into the creek. The time I spend
trying to get the city to do something could also be spent outside
picking up the litter. But then by doing so I suppose I am devaluing
the services of professional stream cleaners.
Sometimes neighbors help, sometimes not- entirely their choice, and the
value I get for doing it is a clean(er) stream. Why should I get
involved in playing games with bureaucracy for money?
> > Why should I accept software that isn't forced to compete out to the
> > limits of technical prowess- which is what you're suggesting.
>
> I can't argue for you to accept subpar software; that wasn't what I
> was suggesting. Competing to make something better makes
> sense. Planning to give it away to create that advantage is a less
> obvious tactic.
I've never worked on an open source project that was started with the
principal goal of putting some for-profit out of business- please
provide an example of a project with that motivation. OTOH, clearly
some open source coders desire that sort of thing- and in the case of
Microsoft I have some sympathy with the desire. But what primarily
motivates me is to not be tied into a byzantine, expensive licensing
deal where I get sqeezed every year for every project that I use the
software on and little or no support for the problems the software has.
> > Why should compsci and IT be spared the sometimes iniquitous
> > competition by those who do it faster and cheaper and sometimes just
> > well enough?
>
> Is it really competition if the competitors are working for free? That
> changes the whole game, much like fighting with someone with nothing
> to lose. Why are those other people so willing to work for free? Where
> are they getting their money from?
Of course it is. For myself, I'm "paying" for open source in the sense
of providing value for the value I receive, so in payment for the open
source I use, I donate my time back. It is "free" in a financial sense,
but there are many kinds of value.
> If, say, the gifted competitor is living at home with the parents and
> has no expenses, he would still do better to sell his creation, even
> if at a slightly lower price than the dominant competitor. As
> Mr. Pitman explained, giving it away destroys value in the work.
If the gifted competitor does better work, or makes it easier to use his
work so I can get the things done I need to, then I say its a clear win
as far as I'm concerned. The dominant competitor had better give me a
technical, performance-based reason to buy his/her software. When I
want to write a Lisp app that needs high performance and a gui, then I
use Lispworks- I've bought it 3 times already because its a clear win
for my purposes. When I want an editor I use emacs because since Brief
in MSDOS I've never seen a for-profit editor that I liked.
> > Are you really suggesting that people are in some way owed their
> > preference of the means by which they earn a living?
>
> Yes, provided that the group can form a consensus. To use an example
> related to one you raise below, a doctor won't work for free unless
> motivated by some unusual circumstances. He has years of training to
> pay for, liability insurance, office overhead, and something more
> subtle: pride in the profession.
In that case I think I'm owed a career as a world famous rock star. I
don't give a damn about "pride in the profession", whatever that is- the
purpose of compsci and IT is to get things done not to make you feel
good.
> If some maverick doctor decides to undercut the competition and work
> for free or even just half the going rate, he won't put much price
> pressure on any other doctors. He can only help so many people, and
> the rest of the doctors will dismiss him in contempt of the
> profession. That one doctor can't destroy that collective pride.
What is "collective pride"? The last thing I want is some group of
former programmers now union-alikes down my back bleating about the
rates I do or don't charge. The ONLY people I'm responsible to are
those paying my salary to write and fix code for them and open source
makes it easier and faster to help them out.
As I said before, I'm quite happy to buy your software instead of using
open source- but it had better be worth it and you'd better go easy on
the insane licensing stuff or I'm going elsewhere. There's your
competition.
> It's that collective pride that I find lacking in the current
> programming community. I can't even call it a profession, but I wish I
> could.
Its a sometimes ugly sometimes fantastic complicated and idiosyncratic
profession, just like all the others.
> > Manual machinists were put out of business by the advent of CNC
> > technology, should CNC have been suppressed to protect their chosen
> > jobs?
>
> No, but the example is not equivalent. We're not talking about
> programming being superseded by some better technology. We're talking
> about people doing the same work but not asking to be paid,
> effectively destroying or eroding a would-be profession.
Its an example of a change in the marketplace requiring evolution or
death- same as open source changes the software development racket.
>
> > How does this cost the profession?
>
> It makes it difficult to earn a living doing the same work you are
> willing to do for free. It's not so much the giving it away as the
> training the would-be customers to expect such philanthropy that hurts
> your peers.
It hasn't caused me any trouble, using and developing and debugging open
source software makes it easier for me to earn a living since I can get
more done faster without some unresponsive vendor always getting in the
way. None of my customers have reacted with anything other than
pleasure when bugs can get found and fixed faster with no huge purchase
orders and brain-dead vendor support to deal with. In fact, we've
contracted with open source developers both on a consulting basis and to
write code for us- and that was possible because there is no vendor in
the way charging some kind of swingeing premium to fix and write the
things they should have done in the first place.
Gregm
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uhdhob5i3.fsf@nhplace.com>
Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
> "Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> writes:
>
> > I can't argue for you to accept subpar software; that wasn't what I
> > was suggesting. Competing to make something better makes
> > sense. Planning to give it away to create that advantage is a less
> > obvious tactic.
>
> I've never worked on an open source project that was started with the
> principal goal of putting some for-profit out of business- please
> provide an example of a project with that motivation.
Stallman's work on the LMITI (LMI/MIT/TI) Lisp Machine comes to mind as
a likely exmaple. Not that LMI, MIT, or TI had this goal, but then,
they were not (as organizations) primary implementors. Stallman himself
was. He did not appear to be shy about his disgust for Symbolics.
He did not exactly advocate for Symbolics success nor anything like a
"live and let live" political position for its presence in the market.
When new release notes would come out from Symbolics, Stallman didn't
just sit down at the Symbolics system and say "hey, cool, I'll use
this", he sat down instead at an MIT LispM with the release notes and
got to work implementing what he seemed to think was equivalent or
better functionality. It certainly appeared to me, and I'm sure to
others, that he wanted there to be NO reason for anyone to buy Symbolics.
After a while, my impression is that he decided Unix was a better enemy.
That's when he turned to standing up against Unix by doing GNU.
And all of that was before Microsoft had taken hold. Once it did, Unix
fell in importance as the enemy and Microsoft became the Great Satan.
These were all highly visible public acts by the movement's founder.
Did he write down a manifesto stating as undeniable fact that this was
his motivation? I don't know that he did. I don't know that he didn't.
But I don't have any personal doubt that he wanted, by his acts, to
economically injure these companies.
Given the almost mystic proportion that he has taken on during all of
this, are you saying you think everyone is emulating every other
aspect of free software but somehow gracefully overlooking this
behavioral pattern as something to emulate as well?
> > Is it really competition if the competitors are working for free? That
> > changes the whole game, much like fighting with someone with nothing
> > to lose. Why are those other people so willing to work for free? Where
> > are they getting their money from?
>
> Of course it is. For myself, I'm "paying" for open source in the sense
> of providing value for the value I receive, so in payment for the open
> source I use, I donate my time back. It is "free" in a financial sense,
> but there are many kinds of value.
"Dumping" by a commercial company is paid for, too, but it is not
considered proper "competition". It unfairly manipulates the market.
The only structural differences between dumping and free software that
I see are these:
* dumping is done by someone who is trying to make money
under the same business paradigm as the other companies
they are affecting, so at least if the whole market is
poisoned, they get injured, too.
* there are laws against dumping, so the person who is injured
has some opportunity for redress
* the companies doing dumping usually have money so if you sue
them, the redress may yield some actual compensation.
* dumping usually has a temporary effect on the market that
goes away when the supply is used up; free software dumping
persists much longer because of the ability of software to
remain and be copied. it poisons the well in a much more
permanent way.
* oh, and yeah, right, i was forgetting: people doing dumping are
utterly evil because they only care about making millions of
dollars and have no conscience otherwise, while free software
people are all, without exception, caring people thinking only
of the good of the world and would do a careless or unthinking act.
Except for this last point, I'd almost have thought that people doing
commercial dumping were better folks than people writing free software.
> > If, say, the gifted competitor is living at home with the parents and
> > has no expenses, he would still do better to sell his creation, even
> > if at a slightly lower price than the dominant competitor. As
> > Mr. Pitman explained, giving it away destroys value in the work.
>
> If the gifted competitor does better work, [...]
By what metric do you judge better work when the free market is not at
work? The free market works when everyone has to account for their
investments. When they dump product at a price lower than it can be
commercially produced, they stifle the ability of anyone who has to
PAY to produce this from entering the market.
>>>>> "KMP" == Kent M Pitman <Kent> writes:
[...]
KMP> These were all highly visible public acts by the movement's
KMP> founder. Did he write down a manifesto stating as undeniable
KMP> fact that this was his motivation? I don't know that he did.
KMP> I don't know that he didn't. But I don't have any personal
KMP> doubt that he wanted, by his acts, to economically injure
KMP> these companies.
I seem recall some text online at some GNU site where he roughly said as
much, but I could be wrong. Quick googling revealed this:
http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch07.html (search for dynamite)
[...]
KMP> Given the almost mystic proportion that he has taken on
KMP> during all of this, are you saying you think everyone is
KMP> emulating every other aspect of free software but somehow
KMP> gracefully overlooking this behavioral pattern as something
KMP> to emulate as well? [...]
Hmm. I don't think many people even know about this. I also think
they miss the preservation of the status quo (as it was then around
you guys) as an obvious initial motive. This is especially tough to
get across to people outside the US when FSF propaganda on 'freedom'
gets mixed up with local anti-capitalist revolutionary rhetoric.
All that said, I think there's enough anti-MS sentiment that people
wouldn't need RMS's anger or knowledge of his patterns of behaviour
to target MS at least.
BM
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> schrieb:
> When new release notes would come out from Symbolics, Stallman didn't
> just sit down at the Symbolics system and say "hey, cool, I'll use
> this", he sat down instead at an MIT LispM with the release notes and
> got to work implementing what he seemed to think was equivalent or
> better functionality.
Were I in a similar situation, I might do that not out of spite for
Symbolics but simply because I'd rather write something myself than pay
for it. Even if it costs me more on paper, my enjoyment of programming
and learning makes it worthwhile.
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <Y5ednQmHOrb6_-rfRVn-tA@dls.net>
Adrian Kubala wrote:
> Were I in a similar situation, I might do that not out of spite for
> Symbolics but simply because I'd rather write something myself than pay
> for it. Even if it costs me more on paper, my enjoyment of programming
> and learning makes it worthwhile.
This brings up an important point I wanted to make.
Those doing free software may appear to be acting in an economically
irrational way, if the only rewards considered are monetary. But
there are other sources of economic utility. The pleasure of creating
something, of learning how to do something, of being known for being
able to do something, is a form of payment. This is why people have
hobbies.
In a free market, wages would equilibrate to the point that, at
the margin, they just compensate for the cost of doing that
job. Jobs that are particularly dangerous or unpleasant will
have higher wages to compensate; jobs that are particularly enjoyable
will be paid less (all else being equal).
For tasks for which these internal rewards are high, the supply
of willing volunteers may drive wages at the margin close to zero.
Examples include writers and artists. Most of these cannot support
themselves without a day job; I understand most novelists will have
made much less than the minimum wage even if their books are published,
averaging the return over the time that was needed to write the book.
So why do they create? Because the internal rewards drive them to do so.
For some forms of programming, I suggest that a similar situation
applies. The free software creators aren't, in large part, politically
motivated, they just really like to create.
Paul
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ubr7s106d.fsf@nhplace.com>
"Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> writes:
> Adrian Kubala wrote:
>
> > Were I in a similar situation, I might do that not out of spite for
> > Symbolics but simply because I'd rather write something myself than pay
> > for it. Even if it costs me more on paper, my enjoyment of programming
> > and learning makes it worthwhile.
>
> This brings up an important point I wanted to make.
>
> Those doing free software may appear to be acting in an economically
> irrational way, if the only rewards considered are monetary. But
> there are other sources of economic utility. The pleasure of creating
> something, of learning how to do something, of being known for being
> able to do something, is a form of payment. This is why people have
> hobbies.
This brings up an importnat point I wanted to make.
Those doing hobbies may appear to be wasting their time in an economically
irrational way, if the only rewards are considered monetary. But there are
other sources of economic utility. The pleasure of creating something, of
learning how to do something, of being known for being able to do something,
is a form of investment. So they may think all that hard work may later
pay off. And sometimes it will. Like how I learned to collect coins and
stamps growing up and now on eBay, after all kinds of time spent pawing
through every handful of change in my life, I can get--well,--bad example--
ok, so it turns out to just be pennies on the dollar. Hmm, well, thank
goodness I collected a lot of Disneyana that--hmm,--no, that investment is
not working out either. Well, how about all those rocks I collected as a
kid and have carted from house to house at great moving expense and storage
expense? No? Drat...
Not every plan to make money does. Not every example of a way someone made
money works for someone else.
Everyone keeps saying I'm complaining about me personally. Whining. It's
inevitable that we all reason somewhat from our own experience. But I'm
not just saying things about my state--I'm asking people who are banking on
all this euphoria about free software jobs to take a hard look... for their
own sakes, not mine.
But I do think we elect the world we want to live in by voting with our
actions. I want to work in one in which I'm economically empowered.
This talk of "important rewards other than money" is fine, but as you get
older, you realize that money is still critical to living comfortably.
Were it not, this whole Social Security thing Bush keeps mumbling about
wouldn't matter. All those nice old people who have done so much for us
will naturally find so much good will flowing back to them that they'll get
naturally taken care of, even without money. Hmmm.
> The free software creators aren't, in large part, politically
> motivated, they just really like to create.
Understand that I think political means only "caring about one's fellow
man" and "wanting to influence the world for the better". Saying someone
isn't politically motivated is, in my world, quite a damning statement.
Do you mean it in that way?
There is more to politics than holding office. But then, there is also
more to informal politics than taking a hardline against paying for things,
and subscribing to ways to keep others from charging. It's a bit like the
minimum wage--you might think you can make everyone fed by raising it high
enough, but it doesn't work that way.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> But I do think we elect the world we want to live in by voting with our
> actions. I want to work in one in which I'm economically empowered.
> This talk of "important rewards other than money" is fine, but as you get
> older, you realize that money is still critical to living comfortably.
> Were it not, this whole Social Security thing Bush keeps mumbling about
> wouldn't matter. All those nice old people who have done so much for us
> will naturally find so much good will flowing back to them that they'll get
> naturally taken care of, even without money. Hmmm.
Incidentally, maybe the main reason why nobody wants to give money
to poor, old people is that we all pay (a good percentage of)
taxes and expect something to come out of that money.
If taxes and social security were super-low, more people would be
willing to help the poor, I think.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> Kent M Pitman wrote:
>> But I do think we elect the world we want to live in by voting with
>> our actions. I want to work in one in which I'm economically
>> empowered.
>> This talk of "important rewards other than money" is fine, but as you get
>> older, you realize that money is still critical to living comfortably.
>> Were it not, this whole Social Security thing Bush keeps mumbling about
>> wouldn't matter. All those nice old people who have done so much for us
>> will naturally find so much good will flowing back to them that they'll get
>> naturally taken care of, even without money. Hmmm.
>
> Incidentally, maybe the main reason why nobody wants to give money to
> poor, old people is that we all pay (a good percentage of) taxes and
> expect something to come out of that money.
>
> If taxes and social security were super-low, more people would be
> willing to help the poor, I think.
^^^^^^^ _able_
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Until real software engineering is developed, the next best practice
is to develop with a dynamic system that has extreme late binding in
all aspects. The first system to really do this in an important way
is Lisp. -- Alan Kay
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <7J-dnUrpev80ZurfRVn-tA@dls.net>
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Those doing hobbies may appear to be wasting their time in an economically
> irrational way, if the only rewards are considered monetary. But there are
> other sources of economic utility. The pleasure of creating something, of
> learning how to do something, of being known for being able to do something,
> is a form of investment. So they may think all that hard work may later
> pay off. And sometimes it will.
Whoa. I wasn't saying this utility was from the expectation of making
money later. I'm saying it's intrinsic utility from the act of creation.
It's pleasurable in and of itself.
> But I do think we elect the world we want to live in by voting with our
> actions. I want to work in one in which I'm economically empowered.
I gave an economic argument for why free software is being created.
If my argument is correct, your arguing against it is fruitless.
You'd be better off trying to live with it rather than playing King Canute.
>>The free software creators aren't, in large part, politically
>>motivated, they just really like to create.
>
> Understand that I think political means only "caring about one's fellow
> man" and "wanting to influence the world for the better". Saying someone
> isn't politically motivated is, in my world, quite a damning statement.
> Do you mean it in that way?
Of course I do. We're wired to do things that stimulate our brains' reward
systems. That may involve causing happiness in certain others, but rather
obviously it doesn't involve significant society-wide altruism in the vast
majority of people (as measured by where they spend their own time and money
when given a choice.)
Paul
"Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> writes:
> I gave an economic argument for why free software is being created.
> If my argument is correct, your arguing against it is fruitless.
> You'd be better off trying to live with it rather than playing King
> Canute.
I understand the basis of your argument to be this:
* [for many people] the primary reward in writing free software is
the personal gratification they receive
* secondary effects include:
* the "portfolio" enhancement from proving that the individual
can perform the task
* the "status enhancement" received from the free software
community
Kent is arguing that they should charge for the software.
I don't see the automatic conflict between the primary benefit of
personal gratification received from writing software and charging
to make it available to others.
It seems to me that the conflict arises essentially out of the
"hassle factor": The "hassle" involved in charging for software
distracts the creator from the act of creation. The creator
naturally seeks to keep the "hassle factor" as low as possible.
I think that the best way to influence people to do what you
consider to be "The Right Thing(R)" is to make it the path of least
resistance. Accordingly, for those who want to see fewer programs
that are given out for no money (whether or not they are given out
with source code), the call to action is clear: eliminate the hassle
of charging for software.
The simplest way to do that seems to be to establish a business
distributing software for a charge. Take a percentage of the
revenue to operate the business itself at a profit, and pass the
rest on to the creator. (This sounds a lot like a music-publishing
or movie-distribution business.) As long as there is little to no
hassle involved in the arrangement from the creator's point of view,
I don't see why they'd balk.
--jon
--jon
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <nsednZwhKPmNJeXfRVn-pQ@dls.net>
Jon Boone wrote:
> I don't see the automatic conflict between the primary benefit of
> personal gratification received from writing software and charging
> to make it available to others.
>
> It seems to me that the conflict arises essentially out of the
> "hassle factor": The "hassle" involved in charging for software
> distracts the creator from the act of creation. The creator
> naturally seeks to keep the "hassle factor" as low as possible.
That's certainly one source of conflict, but there's another:
nontrivial pieces of software are a group effort. It's easier
to attract helpers if the software is free. The group also
is a source of status-related rewards.
Paul
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u3bt37wys.fsf@nhplace.com>
"Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> writes:
> ... It's easier to attract helpers if the software is free. ...
What a strange statement.
I have had lots of people send me mail saying they'd gladly help
me in my consulting if I had work for them. I've never had anyone
contact me saying they'd gladly help me for free.
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> "Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> writes:
>
>> ... It's easier to attract helpers if the software is free. ...
>
> What a strange statement.
>
> I have had lots of people send me mail saying they'd gladly help
> me in my consulting if I had work for them. I've never had anyone
> contact me saying they'd gladly help me for free.
What would have been easier for Linus?
Pay for all the GNU software and all the kernel contributors,
or have them work, not for free, but for the sources?
Well Linus, as a poor student did not have the money Microsoft has to
attract "helpers", so he could pay them only with what he had: the
sources of his kernel. Happily, he did not ask to be paid with money
for his kernel, only by what was disponible to his "clients": their
contributions.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Nobody can fix the economy. Nobody can be trusted with their finger
on the button. Nobody's perfect. VOTE FOR NOBODY.
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ull6uk873.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
>
> > "Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> writes:
> >
> >> ... It's easier to attract helpers if the software is free. ...
> >
> > What a strange statement.
> >
> > I have had lots of people send me mail saying they'd gladly help
> > me in my consulting if I had work for them. I've never had anyone
> > contact me saying they'd gladly help me for free.
>
>
> What would have been easier for Linus?
>
> Pay for all the GNU software and all the kernel contributors,
> or have them work, not for free, but for the sources?
>
> Well Linus, as a poor student did not have the money Microsoft has to
> attract "helpers", so he could pay them only with what he had: the
> sources of his kernel. Happily, he did not ask to be paid with money
> for his kernel, only by what was disponible to his "clients": their
> contributions.
They could have worked for shares in a percentage of the profits.
Christopher C. Stacy <······@news.dtpq.com> wrote:
>> Well Linus, as a poor student did not have the money Microsoft has to
>> attract "helpers", so he could pay them only with what he had: the
>> sources of his kernel. Happily, he did not ask to be paid with money
>> for his kernel, only by what was disponible to his "clients": their
>> contributions.
>
>They could have worked for shares in a percentage of the profits.
Nobody would have bought the early Linux.. and even if they had,
they would've bitten their arse with the unencumbered BSD released
shortly afterwards (after the law suit had been settled). Clearly
the time was ripe (again) for "free" Unix. And it has been exploited
commercially long enough by the industry and they have made (and
still do make) a lot of money from it so there's no point shedding any
tears for that.
mkb.
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u7jieprjn.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Christopher C. Stacy <······@news.dtpq.com> wrote:
>
> >> Well Linus, as a poor student did not have the money Microsoft has to
> >> attract "helpers", so he could pay them only with what he had: the
> >> sources of his kernel. Happily, he did not ask to be paid with money
> >> for his kernel, only by what was disponible to his "clients": their
> >> contributions.
> >
> >They could have worked for shares in a percentage of the profits.
>
> Nobody would have bought the early Linux.. and even if they had,
> they would've bitten their arse with the unencumbered BSD released
> shortly afterwards (after the law suit had been settled).
Your claim is that it wasn't worth going into that business,
and your reasoning is that nobody would have bought the
product -- your implication is that nobody has ever made
money on any version of Unix since shortly before Linux.
I don't think historical reality agrees with you.
From: Edi Weitz
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ubr7qd3ff.fsf@agharta.de>
On Wed, 04 May 2005 22:14:36 GMT, ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote:
> Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
>
>> Nobody would have bought the early Linux.. and even if they had,
>> they would've bitten their arse with the unencumbered BSD released
>> shortly afterwards (after the law suit had been settled).
>
> Your claim is that it wasn't worth going into that business, and
> your reasoning is that nobody would have bought the product -- your
> implication is that nobody has ever made money on any version of
> Unix since shortly before Linux.
No, he said exactly the opposite in the one sentence that you
deliberately elided:
"And [Unix] has been exploited commercially long enough by the
industry and they have made (and still do make) a lot of money from
it [...]"
What are you trying to prove?
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uy8auo639.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
Edi Weitz <········@agharta.de> writes:
> On Wed, 04 May 2005 22:14:36 GMT, ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote:
>
> > Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> >
> >> Nobody would have bought the early Linux.. and even if they had,
> >> they would've bitten their arse with the unencumbered BSD released
> >> shortly afterwards (after the law suit had been settled).
> >
> > Your claim is that it wasn't worth going into that business, and
> > your reasoning is that nobody would have bought the product -- your
> > implication is that nobody has ever made money on any version of
> > Unix since shortly before Linux.
>
> No, he said exactly the opposite in the one sentence that you
> deliberately elided:
>
> "And [Unix] has been exploited commercially long enough by the
> industry and they have made (and still do make) a lot of money from
> it [...]"
>
> What are you trying to prove?
Sorry if I was unclear. I am trying to prove that his first
claim is false, which is why I quoted and responded to that one.
You seem to be saying that his second claim contradicts his first
claim, and you're probably right about that. The essence of his
second point seems to be that the evil corporations had profited
off of Unix for long enough, if his opinion. I had dismissed it
as a political statement, but you're right: it does seem to suggest
that people could have made money.
His point was nobody would buy Linux, and Linus did not have
any money to pay people, so therefore Linus could not have
gotten people to help him work on it for profit.
I don't think he's made his case.
Thanks for pointing out that he himself argued my case,
and defeated his own. I wasn't trying to obscure what he
said; I had just missed that when trying to ignore his
socialist political rhetoric.
Christopher C. Stacy <······@news.dtpq.com> wrote:
>You seem to be saying that his second claim contradicts his first
>claim, and you're probably right about that. The essence of his
>second point seems to be that the evil corporations had profited
>off of Unix for long enough, if his opinion. I had dismissed it
>as a political statement, but you're right: it does seem to suggest
>that people could have made money.
You have an amazingly dilettante way of trying to spin people's
words. Fortunately you aren't really good in it. It's just pathetic.
mkb.
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ull6uo0p5.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Christopher C. Stacy <······@news.dtpq.com> wrote:
>
> >You seem to be saying that his second claim contradicts his first
> >claim, and you're probably right about that. The essence of his
> >second point seems to be that the evil corporations had profited
> >off of Unix for long enough, if his opinion. I had dismissed it
> >as a political statement, but you're right: it does seem to suggest
> >that people could have made money.
>
> You have an amazingly dilettante way of trying to spin people's
> words. Fortunately you aren't really good in it. It's just pathetic.
Hey, fuck you, too!
Edi Weitz <········@agharta.de> wrote:
> "And [Unix] has been exploited commercially long enough by the
> industry and they have made (and still do make) a lot of money from
> it [...]"
You're right that I originally intended that statement to work for
the pre-Linux case, which probably wasn't entirely obvious from the
wording.. but after posting I noticed that it works pretty well in
both cases.
So to sum it up: really noone can complain that the free Unices
poisoned the market so that no earnings could be made from it (no
matter if that model imples the decision to give the early Unix to
Universities for a small nominal fee, or the freely available
Gnu/Linux or the free BSD derivates). Especially if one considers
the many companies that have sold it in the past (over a hundred
different vendors), who all got their share of the pie. That
wouldn't have been possible if it had been from the start a proprietary
system, like DEC's VMS, for example. Its openness created value,
not destroyed it (of course the early Unix wasn't entirely free..
you still needed a license from whoever was the current copyright
holder).
mkb.
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uwtqehuzv.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> So to sum it up: really noone can complain that the free Unices
> poisoned the market so that no earnings could be made from it
As a direct response to my observation that Linus could have paid
developers by a profit sharing plan (refuting Pascal's notion that,
having no cash, Linux could "pay them only with...the sources"),
your latest re-statement seems non-sequitor.
I am also unable to make full sense of your previous response,
where you first addressed my profit-sharing idea by saying:
(a) "Nobody would have bought the early Linux.. ";
(b) BSD was released for free soon after Linux;
(c) Therefore there would be no profits;
(d) _it_ "has been exploited commercially long enough",
and people "still make a lot of money from it".
In that case, I interpreted your "it" (d) to mean Unix,
because otherwise your points -- that Linux could not
have made any profits -- would be self-inconsistent.
I am unable to reliably parse the remainder of your
latest message, due to the ambiguous pronoun "it".
In light of your now mentioning commercial markets and value,
I am wondering if maybe what you're trying to say is: the free
nature of Linux has resulted in lots of money being made,
but that this could not have happened if it had been proprietary.
But if that's what you mean, you have presented no logic here
to support such a claim.
>>>>> "KMP" == Kent M Pitman <Kent> writes:
KMP> "Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> writes:
>> ... It's easier to attract helpers if the software is free. ...
KMP> What a strange statement.
I agree with Paul on this, at least I think I understand part of what
he might mean and agree with my understanding. In much the same way
the bunch of people who have been sinking time into these threads would
not have done so had they needed to negotiate prices and arrange for
contracts, a few patches here a few patches there kind of help is most
likely to happen if people can just sit down and do it. John Gilmore
argues in a similar vein by saying free software brings transaction
costs of cooperation down. (he doesn't have money in mind).
KMP> I have had lots of people send me mail saying they'd gladly
KMP> help me in my consulting if I had work for them. I've never
KMP> had anyone contact me saying they'd gladly help me for free.
But you also have a lot of people here expending their brain cycles
and producing prose on your pet project. Not many have mailed you in
advance I imagine, and they didn't need to ask for permission to
participate. Granted this is not software, but I am not convinced
that the time and energy are incomparable. (besides, since _you_
provide great help here for free, it hard to resist drawing the
parallel).
Note that I am not saying someone can have an idea, hit usenet and
get a first rate novel or a cogent philosophical treatise written by
a crowd -- just that you will get the typos and brainos corrected pretty
quickly in a medium where people can freely interact with the work. At
least that much is obvious to me, anyway.
cheers,
BM
Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> writes:
> In much the same way the bunch of people who have been sinking time
> into these threads would not have done so had they needed to
> negotiate prices and arrange for contracts, a few patches here a few
> patches there kind of help is most likely to happen if people can
> just sit down and do it.
How is this different than the "hassle factor" I cited previously?
Paul's response indicated that there was more to it than just the
"hassle factor". If I take his statement the way you seem to, I
don't see how this is any different.
> John Gilmore argues in a similar vein by saying free software brings
> transaction costs of cooperation down. (he doesn't have money in
> mind).
It is often true that lowering transaction costs (which includes
opportunity costs) increases the number of transactions. "hassle"
is my way of generalizing about transaction costs.
--jon
>>>>> "JB" == Jon Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
[...]
JB> How is this different than the "hassle factor" I cited
JB> previously? [...]
No difference except I didn't remember, at the time, what you wrote
about that! I kinda knew I'd read the argument before too, that's how
I fished out Gilmore out of this mush I have for a brain. My
apologies.
cheers,
BM
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <tNydnSL31opyCh3fRVn-uQ@dls.net>
Kent M Pitman wrote:
>>... It's easier to attract helpers if the software is free. ...
>
> What a strange statement.
>
> I have had lots of people send me mail saying they'd gladly help
> me in my consulting if I had work for them. I've never had anyone
> contact me saying they'd gladly help me for free.
I didn't say 'it's easier to attract helpers if you don't pay them'.
If you're looking for volunteers, it's easier to attract them if
the software you are asking them to work on is free than it would
be if it wasn't.
Paul
Jon Boone wrote:
> It seems to me that the conflict arises essentially out of the
> "hassle factor": The "hassle" involved in charging for software
> distracts the creator from the act of creation. The creator
> naturally seeks to keep the "hassle factor" as low as possible.
I'd say that charging for software is much less hassle than having
a day job (at possibly low wage) to feed yourself.
Of course most open-source projects are useless toys that nobody
would ever pay for, even if they were halfway documented or
stable, but that doesn't change the argument.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Greg Menke wrote:
>>You could also go out in your free time and poison forests, or go
>>volunteer to work for free in a union shop, giving the managers the
>>impression that they don't need to pay the other workers so much. You
>>could build a car factory and give away the goods, destroying an
>>industry by your goodwill. One person's innocent altruism is another
>>person's dumping.
Yes, there's a thin line between atruism and harmful altruism.
>
> Give me a break. I could go out and clean the trash out of the stream
> behind my house (which I do a couple times a year). Should I bill the
> city for my services and refuse to do it anymore if they don't pay for
> my time?
You could try to. If you want a clean stream, the solution would
be to ask everyone else who lives at the stream and gather money
(like taxes) to finance professional cleaning. Of course
littering isn't really legal IMHO, so it would also make sense to
prosecute litterers more. In other countries where they cut your
hand off for that it seems to work ;)
> What about doctors and lawyers who volunteer their professional
> services? Are they somehow detracting from their respective industries
> and devaluing the services?
Sure. The exception would be a doctor working for an institution
or person that couldn't afford it anyway. Like among good
neighbors maybe.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>... Of course littering isn't really
> legal IMHO, so it would also make sense to prosecute litterers more. In
> other countries where they cut your hand off for that it seems to work ;)
> ...
Do it? Do you have any evidence?
One of the non-intuitive things about crime is that the severity of the
penalty does not seem to matter much, within a wide range.
What seems to matter more is the probability of getting caught, and the
chance of being punished quickly. Many criminals having low impulse
control and so punishments far in the future do not work so well.
Tim Josling
Tim Josling wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>
>> ... Of course littering isn't really
>> legal IMHO, so it would also make sense to prosecute litterers more.
>> In other countries where they cut your hand off for that it seems to
>> work ;)
>> ...
>
>
> Do it? Do you have any evidence?
No, but I'm sure I wouldn't litter at all (ok, even now I usually
never do).
> One of the non-intuitive things about crime is that the severity of the
> penalty does not seem to matter much, within a wide range.
It depends on the crime, on the criminal, the chance of getting
caught, and the punishment.
> What seems to matter more is the probability of getting caught, and the
They see you, they make you pay $300. How would that be? You
think people wouldn't at least think twice?
> chance of being punished quickly. Many criminals having low impulse
> control and so punishments far in the future do not work so well.
Anyone who doesn't have impulse control doesn't belong in a
civilized society, but in a prison or ghetto, as he presents a
risk for everybody else and obviously can't be argued with in a
reasonable way (involving reason).
The punishment in the far future doesn't usually involve crimes I
think, but applies to smoking. "Oh, I won't die for a loooong time."
Anyway, people here seem to be offended by the off-topic-ness, and
don't seem to want to killfile or ignore the thread, so I suggest
if you want to reply, please do so per mail.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Jon Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> Nicolas Neuss <·······@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de> writes:
>
>> With free software at hand, there is at least some chance that a
>> small group of people can put something reasonable together which
>> can compete against those large companies.
>
> ...
>
> 3. Produce an "innovative" product. Innovation is difficult to
> do correctly, but if you can pull it off, you can score a real
> coup. Sometimes you can create a market that didn't exist
> before (bonus!). Sometimes you can transform the way a market
> operates. Sometimes you just win big.
>
> Innovation is also expensive, which is why companies tend to
> cycle through periods where they innovate and then periods
> when they coast (or stagnate). Because it is so difficult, it
> is not a sufficient basis for a business plan.
>
> ...
>
> I don't see "free" software helping significantly with 3. Most
> of the free software that I am familiar with is simply a
> re-implementation of something someone else has already done.
> Occasionally, there is an innovative feature added, but the
> fundamental application is typically not very innovative. (There
> are, I assume, exceptions to this, but I probably don't use them
> much).
>
> What am I missing?
Not much I think. On the other hand, I do not see that free software in
general does significantly harm #3. If you want to address the GPL
specifically, please do so.
Nicolas.
P.S.: I think that getting wealthy with 3 is possible, but getting very
wealthy is almost impossible. As soon as your business is starting to work
out you will get an offer of some large company working in the same domain.
Now, you have the choice... And I think it is very difficult to fight
against MS billions. See Netscape or many other cases.
Nicolas Neuss <·············@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de> writes:
> On the other hand, I do not see that free software in general does
> significantly harm #3. If you want to address the GPL
> specifically, please do so.
I am not a fan of the GPL, but I don't see it as a particular
problem compared to other licenses. If you don't like it, don't use
it.
Free software (in general) hurts the 3rd component of a competent
business strategy by initiating the commoditization process (1st
component). This, in turn, eats up financial resources, which in
turn limits the ability to put money into innovation.
Since the competitors are typically working for free, they can
sell a "loss leader" for a lot longer than someone trying to make
payroll can, typically. At best, network effects like the Internet
make it possible for the "free software" competitor to continue
longer (due to fresh recruits willing to work for free). In the
worst case, they increase the quality of the loss leader product,
making commoditization happen faster.
> P.S.: I think that getting wealthy with 3 is possible, but getting
> very wealthy is almost impossible. ... (mafioso tactics by
> corporate competitor scenario snipped) ...
That may well be, but it's only really relevant to someone who's
riding a one-trick pony. From a business perspective, the no
product can last forever even if you are the 800lb gorilla in the
market. You have to be keenly aware of this fact, lest you get
trashed when the growth stagnates. That's why it is so important to
have the extra financial resources to put toward innovation.
The need to be constantly attempting to innovate your products is
urgent that there is a fierce competition for financial resources
between new products/r&d and other needs in a company. This
fragility is why price-wars and loss-leaders end up trashing entire
markets, weakening all competitors.
--jon
Nicolas Neuss wrote:
> Unfortunately, there is a problem with this argumentation. Software is
> getting more and more complex and the cost of building up something
> interesting takes more and more resources. This leads to a concentration
> process which can be observed everywhere in our economy (larger companies
> buying smaller concurrents)[*].
Large companies buy small competition mainly for innovation
purposes. The small companies aren't forced to sell, either.
They just choose to do so, because competing against giants is
hard, and because they are offered a good price usually.
Componentization (a consequence of specialization) leads to
deconcentration. See automobile manufacturers and all the
components they buy from various small companies that focus on
just a few components and excel at that.
In the software world componentization has already happened a bit
(free software are components, as is legacy software), and the
expensive part is glueing them. Therefore we see a huge rise in
scripting language popularity.
Other, big components don't really appear, because probably the
incompatibilties are too big (?). Markets don't develop because
there are not too many interchangeable components, I believe.
So I think that developing software as a small company might be
viable in the future, too. Just make sure you aren't directly
competing with a free software offering, or it could be really hard ;)
> Without free software, there would be some
> point when even Kent could only achieve results working as a small wheel
> inside a large company as Microsoft, Oracle, etc... I doubt that this
> would give him the satisfaction he longs for.
If he's writing stuff that people can get for free, yes.
> With free software at hand,
> there is at least some chance that a small group of people can put
> something reasonable together which can compete against those large
> companies.[+]
Most free software that you can use in commercial products are
libraries (under the LGPL). They are free components, so indeed
they might help a lot, since you don't have to reimplement their
functionality. I also put free tools (language implementations,
build systems ...) in that category. They help reduce the cost of
software development.
The problem is rather free *applications*. In a Firefox world it
will be hard to sell browsers for money -- maybe embedded ones to
phone companies, but even there free browsers are surely on their
way already.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uu0lqft54.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> So I think that developing software as a small company might be viable
> in the future, too. Just make sure you aren't directly competing with
> a free software offering, or it could be really hard ;)
As soon as you release your product, if it's popular, some FOSS
people will organize to put you out of business by leveraging
your R&D efforts in order to bring out a free version.
(If they were a corporation, this would be illegal "dumping".)
Since you can predict this will happen, there's no point
in bothering to be creative in the first place, since you
won't be able to profit from it, and you need to somehow
make money to put the kids through college.
Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>So I think that developing software as a small company might be viable
>>in the future, too. Just make sure you aren't directly competing with
>>a free software offering, or it could be really hard ;)
>
>
> As soon as you release your product, if it's popular, some FOSS
> people will organize to put you out of business by leveraging
> your R&D efforts in order to bring out a free version.
> (If they were a corporation, this would be illegal "dumping".)
True. Fortunately, for now, the open-source weenies don't all
have a college education (that's why they have all that free
time!), and use crap like Java, C, sometimes Python. If I ever
make a product to sell, I'll hope that they'll stumble and fall
over those languages :D
> Since you can predict this will happen, there's no point
> in bothering to be creative in the first place, since you
> won't be able to profit from it, and you need to somehow
> make money to put the kids through college.
Unfortunately that might be true. That's why I'll have to look
for a boring white-collar day job :(
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
> As soon as you release your product, if it's popular, some FOSS
> people will organize to put you out of business by leveraging
> your R&D efforts in order to bring out a free version.
> (If they were a corporation, this would be illegal "dumping".)
Most free software developers are not trying to "put you out of
business"
They're just writing software in their spare time and having fun. Is
there
something wrong with that? Should they just give up, because somebody
else is selling a program that does the same thing?
You know, the problem with you arseholes is that you believe you are
somehow entitled to making money. You are not. If you want to make
money, you really have to work hard. You can't just slap together some
shareware and expect people to pay outrageous sums of money for it.
If there is a better free or OSS equivalent, people *will* use it
instead
of your stupid program that you are selling for $500.
Slava
·····@jedit.org writes:
> You can't just slap together some shareware and expect people to pay
> outrageous sums of money for it.
If those people want the product and can't be bothered to create it
themselves, then the price will settle to something reasonable.
> If there is a better free or OSS equivalent, people *will* use it
> instead of your stupid program that you are selling for $500.
But if no such free version existed, would you go create it and give
it away just to put this first vendor out business? Don't you have
something better to do, such as creating a different product that you
can sell too?
--
Steven E. Harris
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uvf65xnk3.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
"Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> writes:
> But if no such free version existed, would you go create it and give
> it away just to put this first vendor out business? Don't you have
> something better to do, such as creating a different product that
> you can sell too?
One would wish so, but I think the general motivations and
capabilities of the FOSS authors are not exactly what you
might be imagining. Ignoring for the nonce the (substantial)
political motivations they might have, it's infinitely easier
to copy an existing design than to originate one.
On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:10:30 -0700, Steven E Harris wrote:
> ·····@jedit.org writes:
>> You can't just slap together some shareware and expect people to pay
>> outrageous sums of money for it.
> If those people want the product and can't be bothered to create it
> themselves, then the price will settle to something reasonable.
And if they can be bothered to create it themselves, you'll claim
they're "damaging the industry", and ask them to stop? :-)
--
Give a man a match and he'll be warm for a minute, but set him on fire
and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
(setq reply-to
(concatenate 'string "Paul Foley " "<mycroft" '(··@) "actrix.gen.nz>"))
Paul Foley <···@below.invalid> (http://public.xdi.org/=pf) writes:
> And if they can be bothered to create it themselves, you'll claim
> they're "damaging the industry", and ask them to stop?
Of course not. You were probably kidding, but I'll state the following
for the sake of exposition.
Growing one's food or fixing one's plumbing doesn't do any damage to
food or plumbing markets. Most people can't or don't want to do these
things themselves; that's what the markets are for. We can trade money
(as a substitute for effort) to get things we can't make or get
ourselves otherwise.
--
Steven E. Harris
Steven E. Harris wrote:
> Paul Foley <···@below.invalid> (http://public.xdi.org/=pf) writes:
>
> > And if they can be bothered to create it themselves, you'll claim
> > they're "damaging the industry", and ask them to stop?
>
> Of course not. You were probably kidding, but I'll state the
following
> for the sake of exposition.
>
> Growing one's food or fixing one's plumbing doesn't do any damage to
> food or plumbing markets. Most people can't or don't want to do these
> things themselves; that's what the markets are for. We can trade
money
> (as a substitute for effort) to get things we can't make or get
> ourselves otherwise.
Will you agree, that giving techical advice in newsgroups for free
damages the book-publishing industry? And do you have a solution for
that?
>
> --
> Steven E. Harris
"O-MY-GLIFE" <·······@seznam.cz> writes:
> Will you agree, that giving techical advice in newsgroups for free
> damages the book-publishing industry?
The two don't seem mutually exclusive to me, though, yes, a diligent
search or a well-posed question may elicit an answer that could also
be found in a book. Turning the question around, if we couldn't have
discussions in fora like these, would we reading and writing more
books? I doubt it.
> And do you have a solution for that?
As I don't see the problem, it's hard for me to think of solutions.
--
Steven E. Harris
Steven E. Harris wrote:
> "O-MY-GLIFE" <·······@seznam.cz> writes:
>
> > Will you agree, that giving techical advice in newsgroups for free
> > damages the book-publishing industry?
>
> The two don't seem mutually exclusive to me, though, yes, a diligent
> search or a well-posed question may elicit an answer that could also
> be found in a book. Turning the question around, if we couldn't have
> discussions in fora like these, would we reading and writing more
> books? I doubt it.
If "we couldn't have discussions in fora like these", we would be
reading
more books out of sheer necessity.
And there is more to it. If there were no people who amuse others for
the fun of it, the professional entertainers would make more money. And
money is good.
As you may know, for some of the professional journalists, the bloggers
are a menace, and I don't think we'll have to wait too long until they
will express their protests louder and louder.
(and let's not think about protests which may arise from the part of
sex industry...)
I did have a sensation fo "deja vue" reading this thread and.. Of
course!
The "Petition of candlestickmakers": "We cannot compete with the sun!".
http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html
And of course, wealth is not money. Wealth is abondance.
Disclaimer: No, I do not think that FSF/RMS are the Sun ;)
Best Regards
O-MY-GLIFE wrote:
> I did have a sensation fo "deja vue" reading this thread and.. Of
> course!
> The "Petition of candlestickmakers": "We cannot compete with the sun!".
>
> http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html
Cool "story".
BTW, /. mentions: Lawsuit Says GPL is a Price-Fixing Scheme
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/02/229234&tid=123&tid=117&tid=133&tid=17
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Karl A. Krueger
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <d4scs5$kur$1@baldur.whoi.edu>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote:
> The problem is rather free *applications*. In a Firefox world it
> will be hard to sell browsers for money -- maybe embedded ones to
> phone companies, but even there free browsers are surely on their
> way already.
It was not Firefox which put an end to the market for Web browsers, but
rather Microsoft. Netscape was trying to sell a browser as a commercial
product. So was Spyglass. Spyglass's browser was a derivative of the
early Mosaic browser developed in academia; Netscape's was a
reimplementation by the original developers.
Then Microsoft did a deal with Spyglass wherein they'd distribute
Spyglass's browser (re-branded as "Internet Explorer"). The terms of
the deal were that Spyglass was to be paid a small quarterly fee plus a
percentage of the profits. So Microsoft gave the browser away for free
(hence no profits), undercutting Netscape and ruining Spyglass.
Firefox comes into the picture long after Microsoft's "race to the
bottom" had already been completed -- when over 95% of Web users were
using Internet Explorer and suffering the consequences of a monoculture.
It's worth noting that since Firefox started getting press (the 0.8
release in February 2004), the usage share for other non-IE browsers
(such as Opera and Safari) has actually increased. [1] Neither Opera nor
Safari is Free Software or a free download -- Safari comes with Mac OS
X; Opera is a commercial product. This suggests that Firefox is not a
salvo against commercial Web browsers as a category, but rather a crack
in an entrenched monopoly that creates the opportunity for more, not
less, competition.
[1] Source: OneStat.com, as cited in Wikipedia, "Internet Explorer":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu> { s/example/whoi/ }
"Karl A. Krueger" <········@example.edu> writes:
>It's worth noting that since Firefox started getting press (the 0.8
>release in February 2004), the usage share for other non-IE browsers
>(such as Opera and Safari) has actually increased. [1] Neither Opera nor
>Safari is Free Software or a free download -- Safari comes with Mac OS
>X; Opera is a commercial product. This suggests that Firefox is not a
>salvo against commercial Web browsers as a category, but rather a crack
>in an entrenched monopoly that creates the opportunity for more, not
>less, competition.
The frightening thing is... what if IE didn't have all those security
flaws? Would there be any Firefox, or Opera now? Would there be any
WWW left that could be viewed with any browser but IE? Why not just
deliver ActiveX or simply .EXE programs? Would we all have to use
Windows for browsing the WWW because no web developer would undergo
the effort of making his stuff viewable for anyone but IE users?
I wish MS a continued, fruitful, long history of bad-ass security
flaws. Hopefully their software will never improve.
mkb.
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <nNCdnXUG6_lVrevfRVn-pQ@dls.net>
Rajappa Iyer wrote:
> I am curious as to why Kent believes that he is entitled to make a
> living in a particular way.
I don't think he said that. I think his position was that not being
able to make a living that way was a negative effect, a somewhat weaker
claim.
Paul
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ur7gpu2h0.fsf@nhplace.com>
"Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> writes:
> Rajappa Iyer wrote:
>
> > I am curious as to why Kent believes that he is entitled to make a
> > living in a particular way.
>
> I don't think he said that. I think his position was that not being
> able to make a living that way was a negative effect, a somewhat weaker
> claim.
In fact, it's the GPL people who are all about me, me, me and what I
as an individual have a right to. If you talk to Stallman, and I have
many times (though happily not terribly recently), he will probably
tell you pretty directly, as he has me, that he's not in this as some
form of altruism. People assume he's some sort of generous soul
that's out to do mankind a great favor. He is, as he's expressed it to
me, and alas I'm just paraphrasing so I might err, but I think this
catches the sense, just protecting his concept of his own way of life.
Which is no different than what I'm doing.
He called me up at my house one time and harangued me about my not
having made the CLHS a GPL'd document. I told him it was still very
useful to people in its current form, and was paying for the expense
of its production by providing much needed advertising. He said he
didn't care about any of that, including that it was helping people.
All he seemed focused on, and he was pretty direct about this, was
that HE wasn't able to use it for what HE wanted. Stallman seems to
me to want a world in which users have more rights than creators.
Sure, he wants to create something. That's fine. Let him. He's
no worse off with something that is restricted (for a time, I wish,
if copyright would sunset instead of keeping getting longer--that's
another problem I do worry about) than if I didn't make it at all.
But he doesn't see it that way. IMO, he's just mad that he doesn't
have it his way. And it's bad enough that the presence of GPL in the
community drives down prices (something that affects me) without having
him complain that the remaining things I do FREELY (which don't affect
him one iota, other than to deprive him of toys he wishes he could
afford, and that he might be able to afford if he just charged money
for things like the way the economy is designed to do) are not to his
liking.
All I'm saying is that the pendulum used to be swung the wrong way.
He didn't like it, he (to his credit) took personal political action,
moving it a lot in the direction whose initial signpost said "better".
And now, I think, things are not "all better". I think he overshot.
Or maybe it wasn't a good solution in the first place. I think it's
gone too far and needs to back up. Or, at least, we need to
reconsider what we're trying to achieve and whether the existing
mechanisms are capable of getting there at all. But he and others
just continue to push this one thing, as if it leads to All Good. It's
that single-mindedness of Rightness, not the fact that there may be
Some Good out there along with the Some Bad, that disturbs me.
Seems to me you're blaming the wrong thing. It seems to me the
entity to put at fault here is the profit motive itself.
I applaud Stallman for the FSF. It makes software highly accessible to
users.
What pisses me off is that such provision to society isn't considered
something which justifies survival in our society.
If I want to just write free software that I know many people can make use
of then that's not enough to justify my being able to eat. I have to
market it, attribute it a price and attempt to legally force people to pay
for it. If people choose to use the software without paying for it and
without my being able to track them down then I don't get paid and society
lets me starve for not having contributed in a way through which I was
able to extract my livelihood.
Likewise, if my wife decides she wants to devote all her time to caring
for sick, underprivileged children she will herself starving unless she
can somehow convince people to fund her expenses.
Do these things contribute to society? Of course. But does the holy
"invisible hand" of the market give it the provisions it needs? No.
Because a market, despite the propaganda, isn't a good yardstick on what's
valuable in society. To the market, things aren't valued according to
utility or human expense, they're valued according to how well people are
brainwashed into paying the highest price for garbage they don't need.
Stallman, regardless of his personal vices, is contributing something good
to society. What's a shame to me is that we can't all contribute in a
similar way without setting up charity funds and marketing divisions. Why
can't we all just do what needs to be done and have everyone share the
wealth?
I'd much rather just code software and give it away. Fighting for a higher
place in the pecking order seems to me to be a big waste of time and
effort that'd be better spent writing more code. Perhaps you'd be happier
too, Kent, if you didn't have to keep worrying yourself over profit.
On Mon, 02 May 2005 14:26:01 +0000, Kent M Pitman wrote:
> In fact, it's the GPL people who are all about me, me, me and what I as an
> individual have a right to. If you talk to Stallman, and I have many
> times (though happily not terribly recently), he will probably tell you
> pretty directly, as he has me, that he's not in this as some form of
> altruism. People assume he's some sort of generous soul that's out to do
> mankind a great favor. He is, as he's expressed it to me, and alas I'm
> just paraphrasing so I might err, but I think this catches the sense, just
> protecting his concept of his own way of life. Which is no different than
> what I'm doing.
>
> He called me up at my house one time and harangued me about my not having
> made the CLHS a GPL'd document. I told him it was still very useful to
> people in its current form, and was paying for the expense of its
> production by providing much needed advertising. He said he didn't care
> about any of that, including that it was helping people. All he seemed
> focused on, and he was pretty direct about this, was that HE wasn't able
> to use it for what HE wanted. Stallman seems to me to want a world in
> which users have more rights than creators. Sure, he wants to create
> something. That's fine. Let him. He's no worse off with something that
> is restricted (for a time, I wish, if copyright would sunset instead of
> keeping getting longer--that's another problem I do worry about) than if I
> didn't make it at all. But he doesn't see it that way. IMO, he's just mad
> that he doesn't have it his way. And it's bad enough that the presence of
> GPL in the community drives down prices (something that affects me)
> without having him complain that the remaining things I do FREELY (which
> don't affect him one iota, other than to deprive him of toys he wishes he
> could afford, and that he might be able to afford if he just charged money
> for things like the way the economy is designed to do) are not to his
> liking.
>
> All I'm saying is that the pendulum used to be swung the wrong way. He
> didn't like it, he (to his credit) took personal political action, moving
> it a lot in the direction whose initial signpost said "better". And now, I
> think, things are not "all better". I think he overshot. Or maybe it
> wasn't a good solution in the first place. I think it's gone too far and
> needs to back up. Or, at least, we need to reconsider what we're trying
> to achieve and whether the existing mechanisms are capable of getting
> there at all. But he and others just continue to push this one thing, as
> if it leads to All Good. It's that single-mindedness of Rightness, not the
> fact that there may be Some Good out there along with the Some Bad, that
> disturbs me.
On Tue, 03 May 2005 12:19:18 +0800, Robert Marlow wrote:
Why
> can't we all just do what needs to be done and have everyone share the
> wealth?
Because that's not the way we are programmed? And most of us can't use
Lisp for rewriting their heads.
<tuning out again>
--
Christopher
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> writes:
>
> I'd much rather just code software and give it away. Fighting for a higher
> place in the pecking order seems to me to be a big waste of time and
> effort that'd be better spent writing more code. Perhaps you'd be happier
> too, Kent, if you didn't have to keep worrying yourself over profit.
Well if selling software is what you use to feed yourself, then it makes
sense to worry some. I think Kent's issue isn't that free software does
good or not- he clearly makes the point that it does, but that a free
software competitor takes the money out of a market, making it harder if
not impossible to sell a product in the same market.
I think thats true to the extent a market is price based where the
product is pretty much a commodity. Certainly the for-profit software
market is partially price based, but it is also partially performance
based, where software is purchased on the basis of how well it works. I
think for-profit software can have an advantage here at least for larger
companies because of sales force, tech support (such as it is) and
(hopefully) well funded R&D. No doubt the ratio of
commodity/performance varies widely. To the extent a for-profit
exploits its organizational advantages to make better software than the
free software types can, they have a product that will sell. To the
extent they sit on their achievements and don't reach out to their
customers and make their case or don't offer something substantially
better or wrap their product up in onerous licensing terms, then the
free software types can and will (justifiably IMO) eat their lunch.
Gregm
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Tue, 03 May 2005:
> Seems to me you're blaming the wrong thing. It seems to me the
> entity to put at fault here is the profit motive itself.
Oooh! An economic argument. Fun!
> What pisses me off is that such provision to society isn't considered
> something which justifies survival in our society.
Who is to determine which contributions are worth what rewards?
> If I want to just write free software that I know many people can make use
> of then that's not enough to justify my being able to eat. I have to
> market it, attribute it a price and attempt to legally force people to pay
> for it.
If not the capitalist market, then you're going to need some different
mechanism of evaluating the worth of your contribution to society, and
thus rewarding you appropriately. Please propose such a mechanism.
> Likewise, if my wife decides she wants to devote all her time to caring
> for sick, underprivileged children she will herself starving unless she
> can somehow convince people to fund her expenses.
Don't forget that money (or, more generally, wealth) comes from somewhere.
Who do you imagine is paying for her efforts? What if the people who have
the wealth don't value that particular job, whereas the people who value it
don't have wealth? Who is to decide (and how), whether this particular job
is valuable to society or not? Surely the exact value of that particular job
is at least open to debate, don't you think?
> Do these things contribute to society? Of course.
Your "of course" hides a lot of complexity. There are no easy answers in
determining the relative value of things like programming computers vs. caring
for sick kids.
But if you don't come up with relative value, then your society collapses in
a different way. Economics is the study of allocation of scarce resources.
In the abstract, the problem is that not everybody can have everything they
want, because there isn't enough to go around. You have to solve that problem
somehow. When 1000 people want an iPod, but there are only 500 of them, who
gets them? Every society has this problem, and capitalist markets is one
possible solution. You can propose others, but you need to have _some_
solution to allocation of scarce resources.
> But does the holy "invisible hand" of the market give it the provisions it
> needs? No. Because a market, despite the propaganda, isn't a good
> yardstick on what's valuable in society.
That's controversial, to say the least. It's far from obvious that the
free market is undervaluing the job of caring for sick kids. You're going to
have to make a stronger argument than that to be convincing.
> To the market, things aren't valued according to utility or human expense,
> they're valued according to how well people are brainwashed into paying the
> highest price for garbage they don't need.
And you're also very confused about how prices really get set in a free
market.
> Stallman, regardless of his personal vices, is contributing something good
> to society.
Kent's argument is that Stallman is making a change in society, a change which
has both positive and negative effects. The change is not a universal "good".
> Why can't we all just do what needs to be done and have everyone share the
> wealth?
Ah! At last we get to _your_ economic model.
This socialist/Marxist/communist approach to economics ("each contributes
according to their ability; each takes according to their need") has been
thought of, and tried before.
The basic failures of your model, when put into practice, include:
1. Free riders. Turns out lots of people wind up not working very hard
(because they have little incentive), yet still taking a lot (their
"needs" may even grow). So the overall society is both less wealthy, and
also has greater expenses, then in a capitalist model.
2. Somebody still has to decide the relative worth of various jobs. Without
a market, this is usually an "enlightened" person. Evidence suggests that
no person can evaluate the hugely complex tradeoffs among human activities
better than (most) markets.
3. Generally society with these structures result in huge concentrations of
political power in a few individuals, who often turn tyrannical. It's not
a logical consequence of the theory that the leaders become tyrants, but
in practice it turns out to be very, very difficult to avoid political
tyrants with such an economic model.
> I'd much rather just code software and give it away. Fighting for a higher
> place in the pecking order seems to me to be a big waste of time and
> effort that'd be better spent writing more code. Perhaps you'd be happier
> too, Kent, if you didn't have to keep worrying yourself over profit.
Similarly, I'd be a lot happier also if I could just sit around all day and
watch TV, and have somebody write me a check each month to support myself in
the lifestyle I desire.
Why should you get paid for coding software, but not me for watching TV?
You'll find it's very difficult to separate those two uses of human time
in your economic model.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
One thing a computer can do that most humans can't is be sealed up in a
cardboard box and sit in a warehouse. -- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey
Don Geddis wrote:
> Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Tue, 03 May 2005:
> > To the market, things aren't valued according to utility or human
> > expense,they're valued according to how well people are
> > brainwashed into paying the highest price for garbage they don't
> > need.
>
> And you're also very confused about how prices really get set in a
> free market.
Actually, I think that's a legitimate reading of, say, Holden/Reed's
"Strategy and Tactics of Pricing", which is often recommended. It's the
cynical perspective, but about as true as a non-cynical view.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/013026248X/103-1218065-1739858?v=glance
> > What pisses me off is that such provision to society isn't
> considered something which justifies survival in our society.
>
> Who is to determine which contributions are worth what rewards?
I recommend reading business media like Forbes; where, for example,
Intel's Andy Grove explained that he needed "aggressive" government
intervention because he was attacked by the free market. One of many
examples where the US government determines who needs rewarding.
Whether or not I agree.
http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/10/1010grovepinnacor.html
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Don Geddis wrote:
>
>>Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Tue, 03 May 2005:
>>
>>>To the market, things aren't valued according to utility or human
>>>expense,they're valued according to how well people are
>>>brainwashed into paying the highest price for garbage they don't
>>>need.
>>
>>And you're also very confused about how prices really get set in a
>>free market.
>
>
> Actually, I think that's a legitimate reading of, say, Holden/Reed's
> "Strategy and Tactics of Pricing", which is often recommended. It's the
> cynical perspective, but about as true as a non-cynical view.
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/013026248X/103-1218065-1739858?v=glance
What does that book write about? How to price an item "on sale"
for $30, by setting its regular price to inflated $50? How to
score big margins and still selling your stuff, by making the high
price say "this is a premium status item"?
It's still people who decide. I think $300 is way too much for a
music player, whatever Apple says. I don't care if something is
labelled with a brand or "SALE", I look at its price and
features/quality, and then I decide. Granted, I'm a Rational
type, but there is no reason that other people on the Feeler end
of the spectrum can't think rationally, too. If they refuse to do
so, they're stupid and that's their own problem.
If you don't need an item, why do you buy it? Why pay the highest
price, when you're already in debt? I don't believe people make
their decisions as Robert claims they do.
> I recommend reading business media like Forbes; where, for example,
> Intel's Andy Grove explained that he needed "aggressive" government
> intervention because he was attacked by the free market. One of many
> examples where the US government determines who needs rewarding.
> Whether or not I agree.
> http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/10/1010grovepinnacor.html
OMG!!! My business isn't doing as well as it used to when there
was no competition. We need communism, or a nation-wide monopoly!!!
(this kind of reminds me of the ending in The Aviator; nice movie)
Why can't the government finally keep out of economic issues and
do what they're good at -- making laws, making the police arrest
criminals, and endlessly debating stuff in the parliament?
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> > Don Geddis wrote:
> >>Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Tue, 03 May 2005:
> >>>To the market, things aren't valued according to utility or human
> >>>expense,they're valued according to how well people are
> >>>brainwashed into paying the highest price for garbage they don't
> >>>need.
> >>
> >>And you're also very confused about how prices really get set in a
> >>free market.
> >
> > Actually, I think that's a legitimate reading of, say,
> > Holden/Reed's "Strategy and Tactics of Pricing", which is
> > often recommended. It's the cynical perspective, but about as
> > true as a non-cynical view.
> >
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/013026248X/103-1218065-1739858?v=glance
>
> What does that book write about? How to price an item "on sale"
> for $30, by setting its regular price to inflated $50? How to
> score big margins and still selling your stuff, by making the high
> price say "this is a premium status item"?
>
> If you don't need an item, why do you buy it? Why pay the highest
> price, when you're already in debt? I don't believe people make
> their decisions as Robert claims they do.
Robert perhaps wrote it in an extreme manner, as Kent asked people to
do. But he's really referring to the PR industry. So for example, this
study explains "how you talk to parents through kids."
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FVE/is_9_4/ai_54631243
Paul Graham has his own spin.
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
I don't know why people like Robert were asked to give their gut
reactions, just to later stuff words in his mouth. (I don't mean you,
Ulrich.) I don't see one place where he mentioned an authoritarian
Soviet-style centralized government. But people incorrectly infer this.
They participate in the illusion of discussion.
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> wrote on 3 May 2005 17:32:
> I don't know why people like Robert were asked to give their gut reactions,
> just to later stuff words in his mouth. I don't see one place where he
> mentioned an authoritarian Soviet-style centralized government. But people
> incorrectly infer this.
But Robert specifically wrote:
> Why can't we all just do what needs to be done and have everyone share the
> wealth?
That's the important sentence. Both Kent Pitman and I immediately thought of
"from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". I.e.,
the famous quote from Karl Marx. It seems to be basically an equivalent
statement to the one Robert made. Saying that someone (appears to be) a
Marxist is not directly an insult; it's merely a description. Robert seems
to reject the current success of capitalism, and long for a society also
dreamed by Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, Mao, etc. Before they achieved power, they
all had criticisms of capitalism much like Robert does, and proposed
"solutions" that seem similar.
Only, it's very, very hard to setup large-scale societies using this
suggestion, without them turning into "authoritarian Soviet-style centralized
government". It's not a logical consequence, but it appears to be a
practical consequence of starting down that path.
At the very least, since this has been the outcome of others who have attempted
to create such societies, it is important for someone who suggests one to
give good arguments why their vision will avoid this same trap.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
If you want to be the most popular person in your class, whenever the professor
pauses in his lecture, just let out a big snort and say, "How do you figger
that?" real loud. Then lean back and sort of smirk.
-- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey [1999]
Don Geddis wrote:
> "Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> wrote on 3 May 2005
> 17:32:
> > I don't know why people like Robert were asked to give their gut
> > reactions, just to later stuff words in his mouth. I don't see
> > one place where he mentioned an authoritarian Soviet-style
> > centralized government. But people incorrectly infer this.
>
> But Robert specifically wrote:
> > Why can't we all just do what needs to be done and have everyone
> > share the wealth?
>
> That's the important sentence. Both Kent Pitman and I immediately
> thought of "from each according to his ability, to each according
> to his needs". I.e., the famous quote from Karl Marx. It seems to
> be basically an equivalent statement to the one Robert made.
> Saying that someone (appears to be) a Marxist is not directly an
> insult; it's merely a description. Robert seems to reject the
> current success of capitalism, and long for a society also dreamed
> by Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, Mao, etc. Before they achieved power, they
> all had criticisms of capitalism much like Robert does, and
> proposed "solutions" that seem similar.
Why didn't you say Einstein?
"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in
my opinion, the real source of the evil."
http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einst.htm
Or Martin Luther King?
"We must honestly admit that capitalism has often left a gulf between
superfluous wealth and abject poverty, has created conditions
permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to
the few, and has encouraged smallhearted men to become cold and
conscienceless so that, like Dives before Lazarus, they are unmoved by
suffering, poverty-stricken humanity."
http://www.moody.edu/undergraduate/bibletheo/theo/Quiggle/ge420/king.pdf
Modern programmers ridicule Lispers for "rejecting the success of
C/Java and the proven failure of Lisp." And they make up stories about
how we use nothing but lists and functional programming. In the same
way, neoliberals commonly claim everyone else is a Red commie. CS and
economics are similar pseudosciences.
Like David Steuber pointed out earlier, it's like Crossfire. This is
not honest debate. It's like Coke and Pepsi discussing beverage
supremacy. If we can somehow typecast Robert as a Soviet commie,
decades of arguments can be run against him and we'll beat the tar out
of him.
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/001589.html
> Only, it's very, very hard to setup large-scale societies using
> this suggestion, without them turning into "authoritarian
> Soviet-style centralized government". It's not a logical
> consequence, but it appears to be a practical consequence of
> starting down that path.
Well, let's meet up one day, and you can suggest what I did wrong the
last time I tried setting up a large-scale society. I never pump out
enough senators.
> At the very least, since this has been the outcome of others who
> have attempted to create such societies, it is important for
> someone who suggests one to give good arguments why their vision
> will avoid this same trap.
People ignore Emacs when they say Lisp always failed.
Free as in markets. That's why it succeeded.
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> Or Martin Luther King?
> "We must honestly admit that capitalism has often left a gulf between
> superfluous wealth and abject poverty, has created conditions
> permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to
> the few, and has encouraged smallhearted men to become cold and
> conscienceless so that, like Dives before Lazarus, they are unmoved by
> suffering, poverty-stricken humanity."
> http://www.moody.edu/undergraduate/bibletheo/theo/Quiggle/ge420/king.pdf
I'd not say the guilt is with capitalism (no more so than it'd be with
gravitation). I'd have some faith in humanity and would say the guilt
is in the state intervention that prevent people to be more
charitable. When the state takes in change the "redistribution" of
wealth, people are deresponsibilised. Why should they give? the state
already's robbing me $X,000,000 of tax every years for them.
In France, if you _give_ money to somebody else (even to your
children), it's taxed (as much as 30%). Keep in mind that this money
was earned, therefore already taxed (~ 65% in France).
In a purely libertarian state, they'd be no laws that'd prevent people
to give.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein
Rajappa Iyer <···@panix.com> writes:
> Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
>
>> In France, if you _give_ money to somebody else (even to your
>> children), it's taxed (as much as 30%). Keep in mind that this money
>> was earned, therefore already taxed (~ 65% in France).
>>
>> In a purely libertarian state, they'd be no laws that'd prevent people
>> to give.
>
> Yeah, we certainly need dynasties.
>
> The principle behind estate tax is quite simple: every transfer of
> wealth is a taxable event... whether it is your employer paying you
> your salary or your share of the profit or if it is your relative
> passing on his/her wealth to you.
Yes. That means that the state prevents (or strongly brakes) charity.
Quite simple indeed.
Also, if you cannot build a dynasty, why should you work more than to
feed your children and yourself?
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
The rule for today:
Touch my tail, I shred your hand.
New rule tomorrow.
Rajappa Iyer <···@panix.com> writes:
> I know this might come as a shock to libertarian sensibilities, but
> most societies have settled on egalitarianism as a worthier goal than
> dynasties. We've already had at least 5000 years of the latter system
> and quite frankly it sucked... so pardon the historically aware for
> not wanting a rerun.
What sucks is not dynasties, it's scarcity. There's not a lot of
scarcity remaining today, but that created by the states. And envy is
not a positive value, it's even addressed by _two_ of the Ten
Commandments. If you have enough food, shelter and clothing as there
is in countries who don't make war everytime, don't be envious of
dynasties: work to build your own or be content with what you have.
Number 8: Thou Shalt Not Steal
Number 10: Thou Shalt Not Covet Anything That is Thy Neighbor's
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Kitty like plastic.
Confuses for litter box.
Don't leave tarp around.
Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
> In France, if you _give_ money to somebody else (even to your
> children), it's taxed (as much as 30%). Keep in mind that this
> money was earned, therefore already taxed (~ 65% in France).
Sorry to be dense, but do you mean that the giver or the recipient
pays the 30%? Your second sentence suggests it's the former, leading
to double taxation.
--
Steven E. Harris
"Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> writes:
> Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
>
>> In France, if you _give_ money to somebody else (even to your
>> children), it's taxed (as much as 30%). Keep in mind that this
>> money was earned, therefore already taxed (~ 65% in France).
You work, you earn 100 euro.
The state takes or have some priviledged entities take up to 65 euro.
You are left with 35 eur.
You give 35 euro to a poor chap.
The state takes 10.5 euro and
The poor chap receives only 24.5 euro.
> Sorry to be dense, but do you mean that the giver or the recipient
> pays the 30%?
This doesn't make a difference.
> Your second sentence suggests it's the former, leading
> to double taxation.
Indeed, which doesn't bother anybody in the government circles.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
The world will now reboot. don't bother saving your artefacts.
Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
> But if you don't come up with relative value, then your society collapses in
> a different way. Economics is the study of allocation of scarce resources.
> In the abstract, the problem is that not everybody can have everything they
> want, because there isn't enough to go around. You have to solve that problem
> somehow. When 1000 people want an iPod, but there are only 500 of them, who
> gets them? Every society has this problem, and capitalist markets is one
> possible solution. You can propose others, but you need to have _some_
> solution to allocation of scarce resources.
But software is not a scarse resource. If 1022 persons want emacs, and
only 1 have it, all they need to do is that each person who has emacs
make 2 copies and in 9 steps all will have it.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we. -- Georges W. Bush
Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
> Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
>
>>But if you don't come up with relative value, then your society collapses in
>>a different way. Economics is the study of allocation of scarce resources.
>>In the abstract, the problem is that not everybody can have everything they
>>want, because there isn't enough to go around. You have to solve that problem
>>somehow. When 1000 people want an iPod, but there are only 500 of them, who
>>gets them? Every society has this problem, and capitalist markets is one
>>possible solution. You can propose others, but you need to have _some_
>>solution to allocation of scarce resources.
>
>
> But software is not a scarse resource. If 1022 persons want emacs, and
> only 1 have it, all they need to do is that each person who has emacs
> make 2 copies and in 9 steps all will have it.
But there might be 100.000 people who want something "better" than
Emacs, whatever such a program might look like. There might be
some programmers around who would program such an app, but they
have to live too.
You could argue that the interested people chip together to pay
some programmers to write their software, and then the software is
free to go, free to copy and distribute. That would depend on if
the source code is open. Some programmers, just like artists I
suppose, would like to keep their tools, work techniques etc.
secret (i.e. the source), so that they are the ones who get asked
when further work is necessary. With a house you don't
necessarily get the architect's plans (I think). Surely source
code openness is a further point to be argued and to be paid for,
since it's optional (and most people don't care).
If you want to hire *other* programmers to change the program
later in its life, then insist on open components (GUI module,
Lisp engine module, plugins etc.), that can be exchanged
individually, like in cars. I suppose this is why lots of
businesses prefer Java these days.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ah, just as I thought would happen It's been assumed I'm some
kind of state communist. Oh well.
On Tue, 03 May 2005 10:34:19 -0700, Don Geddis wrote:
> Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Tue, 03 May 2005:
>> What pisses me off is that such provision to society isn't considered
>> something which justifies survival in our society.
>
> Who is to determine which contributions are worth what rewards?
I don't condone a system of state control. I just think value can be set
by simply adding the cost of production to the cost of labour - generally
assumed to be static. It's called the labour theory of value and there's
any number of stateless, democratic systems which can be used to decide
such values. The problem with the subjective theory of value is it skews
value in favour of what's better marketed (what I called brainwashing
before in my rather cynical way). When something is produced cheaply but
damage 3rd parties like the environment or other people it is often still
preferred to an equivalent product which doesn't have these externalities.
Simply because it's cheaper. And I've talked to a lot of people who
continue to buy such products. They know the harmful effects but the pull
of price forces them to reluctantly continue with the inferior product,
especially if they're lacking money. Or brand names. Many if not most of
the biggest brand names in clothes are run off the backs of child labour
verging on slavery. Or cigarettes or fast food products which do the
consumer more harm than good. These items aren't even cheap. But
successful marketing has convinced huge numbers of people to buy it just
to be cool. You don't have to call it brainwashing if you don't want, but
I'm not sure how you distinguish it.
How do you avoid these problems? "Government control!" the free marketers
scream. Yay. In the claimed effort to avoid government control they just
bring in more of it in an attempt to fix their system's flaws. Wayda go
guys.
>> But does the holy "invisible hand" of the market give it the provisions
>> it needs? No. Because a market, despite the propaganda, isn't a good
>> yardstick on what's valuable in society.
>
> That's controversial, to say the least. It's far from obvious that the
> free market is undervaluing the job of caring for sick kids. You're going
> to have to make a stronger argument than that to be convincing.
I'm sure if we got the annual turnover of a typical "underprivileged kids"
charity and compared it to the annual turnover of a typical cigarette
company it'd be pretty easy to see which is valued more in a
market. And most people wouldn't find it too hard to figure out that the
charity has considerable more value to society than the production of
cigarettes. Except maybe die-hard nicotine addicts and free market
advocates who swear that if the market says that's the value then it must
be against anyone's sensibilities. But they'd be a minority of people. So
why *does* the valuing system get it backwards?
>> To the market, things aren't valued according to utility or human
>> expense, they're valued according to how well people are brainwashed
>> into paying the highest price for garbage they don't need.
>
> And you're also very confused about how prices really get set in a free
> market.
I know very well how prices are set. And marketing is a big part of
any real market as the name implies. Lower bound prices are set by supply
and then you try to get demand as high as possible so you can force prices
up. It's not difficult to see how values get skewed by successful
brainwa uh... marketing.
>> Stallman, regardless of his personal vices, is contributing something
>> good to society.
>
> Kent's argument is that Stallman is making a change in society, a change
> which has both positive and negative effects. The change is not a
> universal "good".
And my argument is that the negative effects are a result of how the
market system works, and is not a direct consequence of Stallman's
efforts. And my suggestion is that if you have a problem with it, blame
the market and leave Stallman to continue giving us free software. Or if
you're utterly convinced that the market is the end all be all of divine
social systems, then quit whinging and put up with it.
In effect I'm doing pretty well what everyone else is doing, only I'm
less content to slump and say "oh well" and more inclined to be menacing
when I point my finger at the market as the cause.
>> Why can't we all just do what needs to be done and have everyone share
>> the wealth?
>
> Ah! At last we get to _your_ economic model.
>
> This socialist/Marxist/communist approach to economics ("each contributes
> according to their ability; each takes according to their need") has been
> thought of, and tried before.
I doubt you really have any idea of my model from that one sentence. But
perhaps this tangent may help with that a bit.
> The basic failures of your model, when put into practice, include:
>
> 1. Free riders. Turns out lots of people wind up not working very hard
> (because they have little incentive), yet still taking a lot (their
> "needs" may even grow). So the overall society is both less wealthy,
> and also has greater expenses, then in a capitalist model.
I'm not a bleeding heart. It's my opinion that if they can work and don't
then they don't eat. When people don't cooperate with society I see no
reason for the rest of society to cooperate with them so they can go and
try to survive alone. But... I advocate such decisions to be made by some
democratic or consensus style arrangement, so if that's not how everyone
else felt then I'd be happy with whatever else was decided so long as
everyone had a say. If people in general decide they don't mind free
loaders (though I doubt many people would be happy with that) then I won't
complain too loudly.
> 2. Somebody still has to decide the relative worth of various jobs.
> Without
> a market, this is usually an "enlightened" person. Evidence suggests
> that no person can evaluate the hugely complex tradeoffs among human
> activities better than (most) markets.
(+ production-costs
(* price-of-labour average-hours-of-labour-in-production))
With price-of-labour set to constant or close to a constant, that gives a
pretty simple template without much room for interference by subjective
persons in positions of privilege. Much less so if positions of privilege
are removed by replacing government with something more democratic.
> 3. Generally society with these structures result in huge concentrations
> of
> political power in a few individuals, who often turn tyrannical. It's
> not a logical consequence of the theory that the leaders become
> tyrants, but in practice it turns out to be very, very difficult to
> avoid political tyrants with such an economic model.
Ah. Here's your assumption I'm some sort of statist. Far from it. I'd
advocate a democratic system where power is as decentralised as possible.
If the people decided they needed representatives to serve administrative
duties then such representatives should be delegated in such a way that
they are immediately recallable by the people (rather than during periodic
voting spouts) and are mandated in their powers by the people.
Overstepping of boundaries results in immediate removal. Essentially I'd
advocate that delegates have almost no decision making power.
You could I guess argue that "the majority" might become tyrannical but
that's a different debate. Suffice to say I'm confident that "tyranny of
the majority" is in large part a myth and in its worse case no worse
and usually far better than the tyranny of the minority we see when the
minority is in a position of privilege.
Robert Marlow wrote:
> I don't condone a system of state control. I just think value can be set
Sorry, I misunderstood you there.
> by simply adding the cost of production to the cost of labour - generally
> assumed to be static. It's called the labour theory of value and there's
> any number of stateless, democratic systems which can be used to decide
> such values. The problem with the subjective theory of value is it skews
The problem is that good stuff can be produced with low labor, but
still be useful. But ok, at least now we have an alternative
proposal here. Nothing is perfect.
> value in favour of what's better marketed (what I called brainwashing
> before in my rather cynical way). When something is produced cheaply but
> damage 3rd parties like the environment or other people it is often still
> preferred to an equivalent product which doesn't have these externalities.
> Simply because it's cheaper.
Yes, I think that pollution should be calculated as a cost. The
question is, how to charge for it: taxes? I'm generally opposed
to taxes, so I'd like to know the libertarian approach to this.
Otherwise I'm in favor or an environmental tax.
> And I've talked to a lot of people who
> continue to buy such products. They know the harmful effects but the pull
> of price forces them to reluctantly continue with the inferior product,
> especially if they're lacking money. Or brand names. Many if not most of
> the biggest brand names in clothes are run off the backs of child labour
> verging on slavery. Or cigarettes or fast food products which do the
> consumer more harm than good. These items aren't even cheap. But
Open your country to 3rd-world food exports, and it would be
cheaper. People could then choose which product to buy with the
saved money. For clothes ATM there seems to be no alternative, at
least I don't know any brand that advertises human-friendly
manufacturing. I might buy their stuff.
> successful marketing has convinced huge numbers of people to buy it just
> to be cool. You don't have to call it brainwashing if you don't want, but
> I'm not sure how you distinguish it.
That's their choice.
In Germany years ago all candy stopped using artificial colors.
The USA even today are full of them. US-yoghurt is full of
gelatin, preservatives, colors, weird flavor, sweeteners. Same
with other goods. Germans obviously decided to buy the more
healthy (or at least natural) stuff. We have lots of meat, cheese
etc. from ecological farms. In the US you can't even get
whole-grain flour (or I haven't seen it).
> How do you avoid these problems? "Government control!" the free marketers
> scream. Yay. In the claimed effort to avoid government control they just
> bring in more of it in an attempt to fix their system's flaws. Wayda go
> guys.
If you're the customer, ask for different products. You might get
them.
> I'm sure if we got the annual turnover of a typical "underprivileged kids"
> charity and compared it to the annual turnover of a typical cigarette
> company it'd be pretty easy to see which is valued more in a
> market. And most people wouldn't find it too hard to figure out that the
> charity has considerable more value to society than the production of
> cigarettes. Except maybe die-hard nicotine addicts and free market
> advocates who swear that if the market says that's the value then it must
> be against anyone's sensibilities. But they'd be a minority of people. So
> why *does* the valuing system get it backwards?
If people pay for cigarettes, but not for charity? I think it's
clear what they really value. Judge what they pay (do), not what
they say!
> I know very well how prices are set. And marketing is a big part of
> any real market as the name implies. Lower bound prices are set by supply
> and then you try to get demand as high as possible so you can force prices
> up. It's not difficult to see how values get skewed by successful
> brainwa uh... marketing.
Without profit no investment.
> (+ production-costs
> (* price-of-labour average-hours-of-labour-in-production))
> With price-of-labour set to constant or close to a constant, that gives a
> pretty simple template without much room for interference by subjective
> persons in positions of privilege. Much less so if positions of privilege
> are removed by replacing government with something more democratic.
Add to that the profit margin to give something back to the
investor, and you have the current model ;)
> Ah. Here's your assumption I'm some sort of statist. Far from it. I'd
> advocate a democratic system where power is as decentralised as possible.
> If the people decided they needed representatives to serve administrative
> duties then such representatives should be delegated in such a way that
> they are immediately recallable by the people (rather than during periodic
> voting spouts) and are mandated in their powers by the people.
> Overstepping of boundaries results in immediate removal. Essentially I'd
> advocate that delegates have almost no decision making power.
That would much improve the current system in Europe and the US.
> You could I guess argue that "the majority" might become tyrannical but
> that's a different debate. Suffice to say I'm confident that "tyranny of
> the majority" is in large part a myth and in its worse case no worse
> and usually far better than the tyranny of the minority we see when the
> minority is in a position of privilege.
Nevertheless I'm not comfortable with a democratic majority
commanding me around. That's just tyranny of many instead of
tyranny by a king.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> Robert Marlow wrote:
> > You could I guess argue that "the majority" might become
> > tyrannical but that's a different debate. Suffice to say
> > I'm confident that "tyranny of the majority" is in large part a
> > myth and in its worse case no worse and usually far better than
> > the tyranny of the minority we see when the minority is in a
> > position of privilege.
>
> Nevertheless I'm not comfortable with a democratic majority
> commanding me around. That's just tyranny of many instead of
> tyranny by a king.
There are many decisionmaking systems that democratic systems use,
which don't suffer from these problems. Take Israeli kibbutzim,
corporate boardrooms, or American ecovillages. They may often use
consensus to make decisions. So decisions only are undertaken if all
agree to let it go through. Of course, there are often dissenters, but
those dissenters may say, "Well, I have my doubts, but let's try this
for a month, and at that point have another decisionmaking session to
see if we should continue. If we don't consense then, let's stop."
Dissent is important and not an obstacle, because it's more information
for a decision.
The idea is that the group is small enough that interests are well
enough aligned. I've seen this happen enough times to believe it's
effective on many issues.
But consensus is not certainly the most appropriate process in all
situations. So if your child wants to play in the street, you're not
consensing or voting -- you fiat that she may not play in the street.
So it depends.
The main thing about democracy is NOT voting. Showing up every 4 years
to cast a vote is nothing like democracy. Instead, it's about
participation in decisions which affect you. In today's systems,
participation is limited to a few people, with increasing power at the
top. Essentially it is a tyranny of the few, with some minor
accountability.
Another important component of a democratic society is that you should
be able to leave a region/group if it doesn't suit you. Because not all
will.
On Wed, 04 May 2005 05:24:50 -0700, Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> There are many decisionmaking systems that democratic systems use, which
> don't suffer from these problems. Take Israeli kibbutzim, corporate
> boardrooms, or American ecovillages. They may often use consensus to make
> decisions. So decisions only are undertaken if all agree to let it go
> through. Of course, there are often dissenters, but those dissenters may
> say, "Well, I have my doubts, but let's try this for a month, and at that
> point have another decisionmaking session to see if we should continue. If
> we don't consense then, let's stop."
>
> Dissent is important and not an obstacle, because it's more information
> for a decision.
>
> The idea is that the group is small enough that interests are well enough
> aligned. I've seen this happen enough times to believe it's effective on
> many issues.
>
> But consensus is not certainly the most appropriate process in all
> situations. So if your child wants to play in the street, you're not
> consensing or voting -- you fiat that she may not play in the street. So
> it depends.
>
> The main thing about democracy is NOT voting. Showing up every 4 years to
> cast a vote is nothing like democracy. Instead, it's about participation
> in decisions which affect you. In today's systems, participation is
> limited to a few people, with increasing power at the top. Essentially it
> is a tyranny of the few, with some minor accountability.
>
> Another important component of a democratic society is that you should be
> able to leave a region/group if it doesn't suit you. Because not all will.
Seems I'm not alone in this line of thinking after all. I couldn't have
said it better myself.
>>>>> "RM" == Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> writes:
[...]
RM> I don't condone a system of state control. I just think value
RM> can be set by simply adding the cost of production to the cost
RM> of labour - generally assumed to be static. It's called the
RM> labour theory of value and there's any number of stateless,
RM> democratic systems which can be used to decide such
RM> values.
There's more here that you are skipping, I suspect. As stated, this
fits the 'market' itself deciding 'the values' in a democratic fashion
with minimal stretching. No coercion, people vote with their wallets.
No? (yes I am aware where the 'labour theory of value' comes from,
but as you stated it, it is left open to my interpretation).
RM> The problem with the subjective theory of value is it
RM> skews value in favour of what's better marketed (what I called
RM> brainwashing before in my rather cynical way). When something
RM> is produced cheaply but damage 3rd parties like the
RM> environment or other people it is often still preferred to an
RM> equivalent product which doesn't have these externalities.
RM> Simply because it's cheaper.
Is this a marketing problem? It seems the cost is driving the choice.
RM> [examples deleted] These items aren't
RM> even cheap. But successful marketing has convinced huge
RM> numbers of people to buy it just to be cool. You don't have to
RM> call it brainwashing if you don't want, but I'm not sure how
RM> you distinguish it.
It _is_ brainwashing, if you really want to call it that. People
don't react to these observations because marketing is necessarily a
great thing, they react because they view [what they fear will
necessarily be entailed in the] _prevention_ of marketing as a worse
evil. Slavery, voluntary consumption of known harmful products
etc. are irrelevent for this issue. When the guy wants to talk about
his product, how are you going to silence him? (Outright fraud is
something else, of course.)
[...]
RM> How do you avoid these problems? "Government control!" the
RM> free marketers scream. Yay. In the claimed effort to avoid
RM> government control they just bring in more of it in an attempt
RM> to fix their system's flaws. Wayda go guys.
I don't know who does this. But it is clearly hypocrisy.
[...]
RM> I'm sure if we got the annual turnover of a typical
RM> "underprivileged kids" charity and compared it to the annual
RM> turnover of a typical cigarette company it'd be pretty easy to
RM> see which is valued more in a market.
Or the typical cosmetics company, or perhaps MTV, or the vendors of
many other saleable frivolities. You are seeing the choices the
people make in the aggregate. We know here's nothing holy about those
choices even though they might be popular -- this is comp.lang.lisp let
me remind you. The same freedoms with a different group of people
might produce different results, I don't know.
RM> ... Except maybe die-hard nicotine addicts and free
RM> market advocates who swear that if the market says that's the
RM> value then it must be against anyone's sensibilities.
As stated, this _obviously_ is the people's choice. No? People do
know there are underprivileged kids that they could help. Some of
_the parents of those same kids_ also knew that the kids they bring to
this world would be underprivileged but I'd be very hesitant to
advocate 'democratic control' of procreation.
[...]
>> Kent's argument is that Stallman is making a change in society,
>> a change which has both positive and negative effects. The
>> change is not a universal "good".
RM> And my argument is that the negative effects are a result of
RM> how the market system works, and is not a direct consequence
RM> of Stallman's efforts. And my suggestion is that if you have a
RM> problem with it, blame the market and leave Stallman to
RM> continue giving us free software.
I think it is perfectly OK for KMP to criticize the way RMS's marketing
works. He has stated more than once that he's anti-panacea wrt. 'free'
software (BTW, I hope KMP knows sbcl is in the PD and has a past quite
independent from FSF). I agree that RMS is free to do what he wants,
and that he should remain so. That is not disputed.
RM> Or if you're utterly
RM> convinced that the market is the end all be all of divine
RM> social systems, then quit whinging and put up with it.
He's saying many things, one of which is that young people with valuable
skills should make use of those primarily to accumulate wealth as the
first priority. This he means as personal advice. I think it is
excellent advice in any society where a semblance of free markets and
private property are allowed.
[...]
RM> I'm not a bleeding heart. It's my opinion that if they can
RM> work and don't then they don't eat. When people don't
RM> cooperate with society I see no reason for the rest of society
RM> to cooperate with them so they can go and try to survive
RM> alone. But... I advocate such decisions to be made by some
RM> democratic or consensus style arrangement, so if that's not
RM> how everyone else felt then I'd be happy with whatever else
RM> was decided so long as everyone had a say. [...]
The enforcement of these decisions would be how? So I have a say, I
say I don't want to do x,y,z. I get outvoted. How does this group
get me to do x,y,z? I ask this, because I think this 'as long as I
had a voice' scheme might be something you have in mind for other
things than helping those in tough situations. The point being: 'free
markets' are not there because someone set them up for utilitarian
reasons, they are there because people are free and have property
rights. If you wish for even _more_ democratic control in whatever
scale it is not the 'market' you are acting against but it is the
people's freedom and property. This, I think, is why people cry
communist (perhaps unjustly). That said, nothing is really preventing
groups for people to do what you seem to propose voluntarily in small
communities. If you have the US in mind, the gov't there will leave
you mostly alone outside of taxation, firearms and drug-related
things. The relative success of FSF has shown that with enough
like-minded people things can be accomplished within the existing
legal frameworks. Perhaps it is worth a shot?
How did we end up talking about this anyway?
cheers,
BM
"Robert Marlow" <··········@bobturf.org> wrote in message
···································@bobturf.org...
> (+ production-costs
> (* price-of-labour average-hours-of-labour-in-production))
> With price-of-labour set to constant or close to a constant, that gives a
> pretty simple template without much room for interference by subjective
> persons in positions of privilege. Much less so if positions of privilege
> are removed by replacing government with something more democratic.
I see. Strong incentive to get that grade school edumication then. I don't
think you've ever tried to actually bring a product to market, since if you
remove all incentives and rewards from taking risks, nobody will in fact
take risks. We'll be like China around 500 BC. May YOU live in uninteresting
times.
> You could I guess argue that "the majority" might become tyrannical but
> that's a different debate. Suffice to say I'm confident that "tyranny of
> the majority" is in large part a myth and in its worse case no worse
> and usually far better than the tyranny of the minority we see when the
> minority is in a position of privilege.
Look at the bread-and-circuses we already have entrenced in our own society,
and then go look at how much worse it is in Europe. Again, you seem to be
trying to recreate the stasis of the feudal society, rather than the
essential liberalization of Spinoza. Look at history - e.g., land reforms in
early China. It only took about 200 years each time the emporer
redistributed the land for the land to become reconcentrated. Most folks are
happy to give up their share to others in order to maintain their essential
laziness. Folks like Bill Gates actually do provide a valuable service to
society because they don't take their money and bury it in the back yard -
they create more wealth with it, and thus there are more jobs, more folks
who can eat, etc. than otherwise.
But to bring it back to free software - the essential argument of RMS is
that programming should be treated like labor as it is today, but the
product of the labor should not be property. That is, much as one invests in
say window treatments and other stylistic apparatus for a house that have
little or no resale value, we should pretend that software also has no
inherent value. I find myself in general agreement with KMP that this is
pretty foolish - constructing software is a creative act that cannot be
performed by anyone, the product can have greater or lesser utility
depending on its various qualities, and as such we as society should
encourage the creation of good software as we wish to encourage new ideas,
new expressions of ideas, etc.
Now the question becomes, do the existing IP protections help or hinder
that? Existing IP protections clearly makes it easier to prevent others from
reinventing what you already have protection for (stealing an idea), but
it's not clear that damping down the new idea construction that may result
from free exchange of ideas is good - that securing all the wealth to an
original creator doesn't slow down the creation of new wealth and
contributions from the potentially large number of subsequent "inspired"
creators. And I think that's were the open software debate really is - not
so much in terms of driving down the marketablity of programmers (that
particular battle has already been lost - outsourcing to China, India, etc.
increases), but how we want to value the inherent worth of "actionable
ideas" such as programs. And these ideas have more than one component, in
that there is the action performed, but also the way in which they
accomplish the action - and the value of the latter is monopolized (possibly
forever) in the current closed/trade secret type of protections. My take on
open software is that it's trying to free up this latter value in some way,
that current mechanisms have allowed companies to keep close to their
chests.
Gorbag, the experimental philosopher
But this is pretty far afield of lisp conditions.
Gorbag <······@invalid.acct> wrote:
>laziness. Folks like Bill Gates actually do provide a valuable service to
>society because they don't take their money and bury it in the back yard -
Today I read that M$FT wants to introduce "Metro", a meant-to-be
competitor to the well known PDF document format, in Windoze Longhorn.
Of course the reason is clear -- to damage PDF which has become far
too ubiquitous, valuable and portable for M$FT. For once, after
years, PDF has emerged to replace the goddamn .DOC as a more or
less standard format for document exchange, and you have free viewers
(e.g. xpdf) that work on many platforms. A completely inacceptable
situation for M$FT. So they have to recreate an incompatible,
less-featured proprietary implementation of the same concept that
only works on Windoze in order to gain back "control" over the
"market".
Is that the "valuable service to society" that you're talking about?
Torpedoing everything that isn't theirs and which doesn't exclusively
serve keeping the junkies addicted to their products?
In my opinion that's just antisocial asshole behaviour. But then,
I'm just a "socialist" European anyways.
mkb.
+ "Gorbag" <······@invalid.acct>:
| But this is pretty far afield of lisp conditions.
But quite relevant to the condition of lispers?
--
* Harald Hanche-Olsen <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- Debating gives most of us much more psychological satisfaction
than thinking does: but it deprives us of whatever chance there is
of getting closer to the truth. -- C.P. Snow
Harald Hanche-Olsen wrote:
> + "Gorbag" <······@invalid.acct>:
>
> | But this is pretty far afield of lisp conditions.
>
> But quite relevant to the condition of lispers?
You mean, in the Java world open-source is an exception?
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Gorbag schrieb:
[snip]
Hallo
Just a point here:
In practice I have a CD-ROM full of software, also known as shareware.
It dated to 1997. "144 top shareware programms" so the title says.
Are here any readers willing to pay for one of these programs? Most did
not have a computer, old enough to run these programs, nor did they have
the OS.
There is the point that programmers do write software. So what should
happen to the product?
Most programmers will not rewrite their old work, but write new software
instead.
lin
It is a (...) to write software that deletes itself in 2 years, insn't
it?
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Wed, 04 May 2005:
> Ah, just as I thought would happen It's been assumed I'm some
> kind of state communist. Oh well.
Well. You did write:
>>> Why can't we all just do what needs to be done and have everyone share
>>> the wealth?
It's hard to imagine what else your vision might be, other than something
similar to communism.
> I just think value can be set by simply adding the cost of production to
> the cost of labour - generally assumed to be static. It's called the labour
> theory of value
Why does all labor have the same value, in your mind? Haven't you encountered
programmers who seem to be ten times more productive than other programmers?
Do you imagine that it is not possible to improve in one's job, say through
practice or training? What would be the incentive to do so, in your system?
In fact, there seems to be a disincentive: namely, that if after you improve
you can do your old job in less time, apparently you'll now get paid _less_
for it!
Second problem: you haven't accounted for the allocation of scarce resources
on the demand side. If you fix prices in this way, you'll find that some
items are vastly more popular than other items, despite costing the same to
create. For example, many more people want Apple's iPod than a similar
offering from Creative. Yet, if prices are fixed, then the manufacturers have
little incentive to make more of the more popular ones.
So what is your solution to the allocation problem? If there are only
500 iPods, on sale for the fixed price of $50, and 100,000 people want them
at that price, who gets them? Do you imagine a first-come first-served, or
a lottery system, or perhaps long lines at the retail store in the days and
weeks before initial release, or what?
And don't forget that you'll have a huge black market problem, since people
are willing to pay far, far more for the limited item then the offical
state-sanctioned price.
> When something is produced cheaply but damage 3rd parties like the
> environment or other people it is often still preferred to an equivalent
> product which doesn't have these externalities.
Sure. Unregulated free-markets have well known failures. Externalities is
one of them. (Others include "tradegy of the commons", monopolies, etc.)
Nobody is arguing for unregulated markets. But once you account for the very
few modes of free market failure, what you get with floating prices and
competitive manufacturers seems to be about as good as anybody has ever figured
out.
> I know very well how prices are set. And marketing is a big part of
> any real market as the name implies. Lower bound prices are set by supply
> and then you try to get demand as high as possible so you can force prices
> up. It's not difficult to see how values get skewed by successful
> brainwa uh... marketing.
I never said that marketing had no influence at all. But it's a distant,
minor influence on prices, far below: production costs, market structure
(how many producers/consumers are there), design, current fads, etc.
>> 2. Somebody still has to decide the relative worth of various jobs.
> (+ production-costs
> (* price-of-labour average-hours-of-labour-in-production))
So, the more efficiently that I work, the less money I make. Nice!
Apparently, I do best by being really, really, really slow and lazy.
Then I get paid the most!
> You could I guess argue that "the majority" might become tyrannical but
> that's a different debate.
I disagree with you about this too. Let's try a different quote: "Absolute
power corrupts absolutely." The best thing about the US Constitution is the
_limits_ on government: two houses of Congress, checks and balances between
three branches of government, and most especially the Bill of Rights,
providing large protections to individuals.
"Majority rules", like you seem to suggest, is a terrible idea. Do you support
slavery in the 1700's in the US? Lynchings of blacks in the US south in the
late 1800's? These kinds of things had majority support of the local
population.
> Suffice to say I'm confident that "tyranny of the majority" is in large
> part a myth
I couldn't disagree with you more strongly. Maintaining minority rights
(where I mean "minority" as generally as possible, not just in a racial sense)
is the single most critical feature of a proposed system of government.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves
largess out of the public treasury.
-- Alexander Tyler, eighteenth-century Scottish historian
On Wed, 04 May 2005 17:29:27 -0700, Don Geddis wrote:
> Why does all labor have the same value, in your mind? Haven't you
> encountered programmers who seem to be ten times more productive than
> other programmers?
The cost of labour I mentioned is intended to be an average used to figure
what cost a product has. Of course it may vary from individual to
individual and I'd have no problem at all with someone getting greater
rewards for being more productive than average or getting fewer rewards
for being less productive.
Does that generally happen in our society? No, funnily enough, usually
people are paid approximately the same rate according to their rank.
There's exceptions, but it's pretty rare people will be individually
rewarded for being more productive other than getting moved up rank,
possibly into a job they'd rather not do like management. Of course low
productivity always has the threat of getting fired.
> Second problem: you haven't accounted for the allocation of scarce
> resources on the demand side. If you fix prices in this way, you'll find
> that some items are vastly more popular than other items, despite costing
> the same to create.
There's two popular solutions that I know of (though there's probably
others I don't know of). First is to allow price fluctuations
according to demand and supply while costs of labour in those sectors stay
close to average. The idea is that without huge gaps between rich and
poor, demand is less likely to be fickle as it is when a few people are
excessively rich and, say, order more iPods than they use.
The other is a scarcity index. Each production site simply maintains an
index of their supply relative to demand. When a consumer notices
one of it's suppliers scarcity index drop indicating less supply (eg
unexpected drop in natural resources) or increased demand, it simply takes
that into account in its orders. It can check with the supplier to get
an idea of whether the change is likely to be temporary or long term and
determine if it can get by on reserved stock or it needs to investigate
the feasibility of alternative supplies.
Of course there's still going to be situations where supply simply can't
meet demand in which case some sort of rationing is needed. That
happens even now. So how is that problem currently solved? Purchasing
power forms a sort of rationing - that needn't change though with the
abolishing of non-labour forms of income and fairly standard wages no
longer would there be the problem of ridiculously rich people hoarding all
they can get. Also producers simply impose rationing by saying things like
"X items per person" or "first come first serve". Nothing much need change
there either. Finally, in extreme cases right now the government might
step in to impose rations. I'd argue such decisions would be better left
as a collective decision by the people affected.
So it seems to me that scarcity wouldn't form any bigger problem than it
is already.
> And don't forget that you'll have a huge black market problem, since
> people are willing to pay far, far more for the limited item then the
> offical state-sanctioned price.
Where do you get the idea that a state has to be anywhere in the equation?
I don't see where the "problem" is with having a black market but feel
free to fill me in if I've missed it. It seems to me if demand becomes
such a problem that people are reduced to having to spend much more than
cost price for an item they desperately need then so be it. As determined
by my above suggestions black markets need be no more (and more likely
less) ubiquitous than they are now in helping fix problems of scarcity. So
the costs of a black market would remain the same as the costs to the
individuals suffering their predicament in the current system. The current
system also whines about the black market because of lost taxes but I
don't advocate taxes anyway, so if taxes are abolished black
markets would actually be less of a "problem" than they are now.
> Sure. Unregulated free-markets have well known failures. Externalities
> is one of them. (Others include "tradegy of the commons", monopolies,
> etc.) Nobody is arguing for unregulated markets. But once you account for
> the very few modes of free market failure, what you get with floating
> prices and competitive manufacturers seems to be about as good as anybody
> has ever figured out.
Those modes of market failure aren't few and certainly not negligible. You
also forgot to mention problems of unemployment, labour exploitation, and
irrational inequalities of wealth and power to name a few. I've offered
just one well-known alternative to market economics; one which I've yet to
see proven to introduce additional problems and which avoids the market
problems of a profit-centric system of production. The market's better
than a lot of other tried systems, but unless you judge something's worth
soley by how currently popular it is (as market advocates are wont to do),
it's far from the best figured out.
>>> 2. Somebody still has to decide the relative worth of various jobs.
>> (+ production-costs
>> (* price-of-labour average-hours-of-labour-in-production))
>
> So, the more efficiently that I work, the less money I make. Nice!
>
> Apparently, I do best by being really, really, really slow and lazy. Then
> I get paid the most!
No. As I've explained before, I don't advocate society letting you take
without giving back. I'd encourage that you being left to fend on your
own. Also, as I mentioned previously in this post, price-of-labour is a
population average which can be permitted to fluctuate between individuals
but according to productivity rather than rank.
>> You could I guess argue that "the majority" might become tyrannical but
>> that's a different debate.
>
> I disagree with you about this too. Let's try a different quote:
> "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." The best thing about the US
> Constitution is the _limits_ on government: two houses of Congress, checks
> and balances between three branches of government, and most especially the
> Bill of Rights, providing large protections to individuals.
Those limits are good, but you still have a government run by a group of
individuals which are far from representative of the total population.
Most if not all of them have gotten to their position by paying for hugely
expensive campaigns either by being excessively rich to begin with and/or
by being backed by rich corporate sponsors. So whose interests do you
think such a group of like minded people are going to favour? Wealthy
people of course.
And you're always going to have such problems in a representative system.
When you're provided with a group of people to select a ruler from, you
have to ask who's selecting that group of people. Then you know who the
government's really working for. And that's where tyrrany of the MINority
sets in.
> "Majority rules", like you seem to suggest, is a terrible idea. Do you
> support slavery in the 1700's in the US? Lynchings of blacks in the US
> south in the late 1800's? These kinds of things had majority support of
> the local population.
In general, a small group of people selected at random from the total
population will have approximately the same proportion of alternate
convictions as the total population as simple statistics dictates. So if a
government were randomly selected there wouldn't be much difference in how
much tyranny they get up to except that given the population of the ruling
class is drastically reduced they're in a much better position to bargain
with eachother and cooperate for their own gain at the expense of the
population. So a small group of people with control over the decisions
affecting everyone has on average the same amount of tyrrany as letting
everyone have a say in their decisions in addition to the increased
probability of corruption and vested interests inherent in a small group
of rulers. So in the average case, small groups of people in power is
always inferior to full democracy.
I'm not an American so American history is pretty uninteresting to me, but
from what I understand the requirement of being a governmental
representative at that time was that you had to own property (as in land).
The mentality at the time was that property owners were fully matured
adults and anyone else was a servant and considered a child and not given
rights such as voting. I may have read this amongst some falsehood-ridden
propaganda but it's 04:00 in the morning here and I don't have time to
check up on this properly. Feel free to see if you can find any sources on
this and let me know if I've been mislead or correctly informed. But if
this is true then one implication is that all we know of majority opinion
at that time is quite possibly skewed as it would only include the
opinions of white, property owning males. Also, as I said I don't know
much about American history and I'm rushing it now, but I'd hazard a guess
that the property owners of the northern states were at an economic
disadvantage compared to the property owners of the southern states who
were benefiting from slavery. So it's possibly there was a selfish
incentive to trigger an action in favour of higher moral ground.
And now it's time for me to sleep. Goodnight everybody.
From: Russell McManus
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87ll6stp09.fsf@cl-user.org>
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> writes:
First you say:
> Finally, in extreme cases right now the government might step in to
> impose rations.
Then you claim:
> Where do you get the idea that a state has to be anywhere in the
> equation?
I get the idea from _you_. Can you at least _attempt_ to be
internally consistent?
Finally, a point that you failed to address: YOUR IDEAS HAVE BEEN
TRIED AND THEY FAILED MISERABLY. What say you?
-russ
You've obviously not read my post very empathetically. I didn't advocate
the government stepping in. I simply said that's what happens right now
(though I probably should have said "that's what probably would happen
right now" since I can't actually think of any examples outside of
hollywood disaster movies). In the very next sentence I said "I'd argue
such decisions would be better left as a collective decision by the people
affected." So I actually quite clearly expressed that I _don't_ think a
state should be anywhere in that particular equation.
I'm curious to know what examples you're thinking of where my ideas have
been tried and failed miserably. I'm guessing you're jumping to the
conclusion without reading properly that I'm some kind of state communist
and thinking along the lines of USSR or PRC. If so, you're way off and you
need to read a bit more carefully before you fire off overly emotional
rants in such a religious manner.
Hmm, I think I bit into that bait a bit harder than necessary.
On Fri, 06 May 2005
10:20:22 -0400, Russell McManus wrote:
>
> Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> writes:
>
> First you say:
>
>> Finally, in extreme cases right now the government might step in to
>> impose rations.
>
> Then you claim:
>
>> Where do you get the idea that a state has to be anywhere in the
>> equation?
>
> I get the idea from _you_. Can you at least _attempt_ to be internally
> consistent?
>
> Finally, a point that you failed to address: YOUR IDEAS HAVE BEEN TRIED
> AND THEY FAILED MISERABLY. What say you?
>
> -russ
From: Russell McManus
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87hdhgtifq.fsf@cl-user.org>
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> writes:
> You've obviously not read my post very empathetically.
You're right. I'm foolishly relying on logic and experience rather
than empathy.
> I didn't advocate the government stepping in. I simply said that's
> what happens right now.
Indeed that is _not_ what you said in your previous post. I point out
an obvious contradiction and you refuse to acknowledge it. I detect a
pattern here.
> In the very next sentence I said "I'd argue such decisions would be
> better left as a collective decision by the people affected." So I
> actually quite clearly expressed that I _don't_ think a state should
> be anywhere in that particular equation.
This is really a non-answer. But OK, how would that be achieved? Be
specific.
> I'm curious to know what examples you're thinking of where my ideas
> have been tried and failed miserably. I'm guessing you're jumping to
> the conclusion without reading properly that I'm some kind of state
> communist and thinking along the lines of USSR or PRC. If so, you're
> way off and you need to read a bit more carefully before you fire
> off overly emotional rants in such a religious manner.
I suspect that you don't want to actually hear an answer. But I will
provide one for other interested readers. Your ideas are dangerous
and it seems worthwhile to me to contradict them.
The examples can be found throughout the bloody history of the 20th
century. When ever a group decides that they have a better
understanding of how society should be organized, they must choose
whether to try to convince others of this, or force their ideas down
everyone else's throats.
Usually they start by trying to convince others. But before too long,
the do-gooders lose patience with this strategy, and decide to enforce
their ideas on others (after all, it will make things "better!").
When they are lucky enough to gain power, the do-gooders inevitably
have trouble delivering the promised economic benefits, because their
ideas ignore important elements of human nature such as self-interest,
and other results from basic economics. Your ideas fall into this
category.
When confronted with the reality of their failure, the do-gooders are
next forced to decide whether to admit they were wrong, or to blame
the inevitable opposition to their "one true way". Thanks to their
stupendous egos, to do-gooders decide indeed that the problem was that
the opposition did not allow the program to go into full effect. So
they argue that they must assume full control of the state; see what
happens when we allow those pesky opposition people to spoil things!
The result is a totalitarian state.
This is the inevitable evolution of command economies. You are
proposing a command economy, even if you don't think so.
Next let me turn to your use of the word "religious". It is you who
is relying on faith, not I. I am relying on bitter experience. Faith
is belief in the absence of evidence; what you are doing is one step
further; it is faith even when confronted with counter-evidence!
Economic theories that ignore the problem of political agency or rely
on coersion are bound to fail. If you can't convince people to follow
your policies, and don't allow people to make their own choices, then
you are coercing them. Who should have this coercive power, and how
do we stop them from abusing it?
Why do you think people will adopt your ideas without coersion? They
won't: by choice people will instead set up markets on their own.
Prisoners use cigarettes as money. Etc. etc. etc.
So your ideas will either be happily ignored, or will result in a
totalitarian state.
-russ
On Fri, 06 May 2005 12:42:17 -0400, Russell McManus wrote:
>> I didn't advocate the government stepping in. I simply said that's what
>> happens right now.
>
> Indeed that is _not_ what you said in your previous post. I point out an
> obvious contradiction and you refuse to acknowledge it. I detect a
> pattern here.
Seriously, read it again. You've misinterpreted that sentence and are
misrepresenting my argument. Don't work the straw man here insisting I
meant something I didn't.
>> In the very next sentence I said "I'd argue such decisions would be
>> better left as a collective decision by the people affected." So I
>> actually quite clearly expressed that I _don't_ think a state should be
>> anywhere in that particular equation.
>
> This is really a non-answer. But OK, how would that be achieved? Be
> specific.
How more specific than "I'd argue such decisions would be better left as a
collective decision by the people affected" do I need to be?
"Democratic/Consensus Processes" if that helps you get my meaning.
> The examples can be found throughout the bloody history of the 20th
> century. When ever a group decides that they have a better understanding
> of how society should be organized, they must choose whether to try to
> convince others of this, or force their ideas down everyone else's
> throats.
>
> Usually they start by trying to convince others. But before too long, the
> do-gooders lose patience with this strategy, and decide to enforce their
> ideas on others (after all, it will make things "better!").
>
> When they are lucky enough to gain power, the do-gooders inevitably have
> trouble delivering the promised economic benefits, because their ideas
> ignore important elements of human nature such as self-interest, and other
> results from basic economics. Your ideas fall into this category.
>
> When confronted with the reality of their failure, the do-gooders are next
> forced to decide whether to admit they were wrong, or to blame the
> inevitable opposition to their "one true way". Thanks to their stupendous
> egos, to do-gooders decide indeed that the problem was that the opposition
> did not allow the program to go into full effect. So they argue that they
> must assume full control of the state; see what happens when we allow
> those pesky opposition people to spoil things! The result is a
> totalitarian state.
So what you're trying to say, despite me saying again and again that it's
not true, is I'm advocating state communism like the USSR or china or any
of the other so-called socialist countries?
I don't know how many times I have to say this, but I do *not* advocate
state communism. I think it's foolish and doomed to fail as it has done.
Marx got it wrong. You really need to stop beating this straw man if we're
to have any rational discourse here.
There's quite a big difference between those systems and what I'm
talking about. To begin with, state communism is based on the ideas of
Marx who in no uncertain terms said the state was a tool that should be
used by the proletariat to bring about fruitation of their ideas. And
that's exactly what they those countries did. But of course, you turn any
slave into a ruler and they'll soon stop thinking like a slave and
learn to start thinking like a ruler, just as one of Marx's biggest
opponents Mikhail Bakunin objected.
Basically the way those countries were set up was to the effect of
being one big nation-wide corporation where the people at the top leach
off the workers and everyone's paid according to their rank and their
individual productive efforts are ignored. Things work the same in
capitalism, only in capitalism you have the threat of unemployment to keep
you working at least at a minimum standard.
> This is the inevitable evolution of command economies. You are proposing
> a command economy, even if you don't think so.
The version of the ideas that I've mostly expressed here are indeed a
command economy. But the difference between what I'm thinking and what
you're thinking is that I'm thinking of command by the people as a whole,
not a small group of privileged bureaucrats.
> Next let me turn to your use of the word "religious". It is you who is
> relying on faith, not I. I am relying on bitter experience. Faith is
> belief in the absence of evidence; what you are doing is one step further;
> it is faith even when confronted with counter-evidence!
What makes you think your "bitter experience" is superior to my "bitter
experience"?
I don't have faith in the system I proposed. In fact I can tell you
exactly where the weaknesses in my system are and that you haven't come
close to them. I've compared it to alternatives and I'm convinced that
despite those weaknesses it's the best social system I've yet encountered.
You on the other hand are basically spouting the same shocked rhetoric I
hear from every other layman who's accepted everything they've been told
about the supposed glories of the market without thinking about it too
hard. If you're like any of the others, your "bitter experience" is
probably that you grew up in capitalism, continually got told that
the only alternative is state communism and look how terrible that was,
and despite all the problems with capitalism at least it's the best out of
the two alternatives around. Well, were there really only two alternatives
you may even be right. I don't hold state communism in any higher esteem
than capitalism. But the fact is that it's not the only alternative to
state communism and far from the best for reasons I've alluded to in other
posts.
> Economic theories that ignore the problem of political agency or rely on
> coersion are bound to fail. If you can't convince people to follow your
> policies, and don't allow people to make their own choices, then you are
> coercing them. Who should have this coercive power, and how do we stop
> them from abusing it?
I have not once advocated coercing anyone. If my ideas don't have popular
support then I'm satisfied to simply accept that they're not going to
happen. THE most fundamental premise of the society I'm talking about is
that coercion be avoided in all its forms. In fact that's where the ideas
of minimising unequal distribution of wealth and (though I haven't yet
said it explicitly, surely it should be obvious by now) abolishing the
state come from. If I were to advocate coercing everyone into my system
then I really would be being inconsistent.
> Why do you think people will adopt your ideas without coersion? They
> won't: by choice people will instead set up markets on their own.
> Prisoners use cigarettes as money. Etc. etc. etc.
I'd like to think that people may adopt my ideas without coercion because
they're inherently superior to what we currently have. Just like java
programmers switching to lisp. Of course it's an uphill battle because
just like with Java, people prefer to believe in the status quo than do
any real research on the alternatives (how many points do I get for
sneaking an on-topic subject in? ;).
Given that I'm against coercion, I also don't suggest that markets be
"illegalised" or anything so ridiculous. So yeah, people probably will set
up markets. There are variants of my theory which allow for
non-capitalist markets and if their advocates can make it work without
it degenerating into people coercing and exploiting each other then good
on them. I just tend to think it's more convenient and socially humane to
work on principles of cooperation than principles of competition.
Robert Marlow wrote:
> So what you're trying to say, despite me saying again and again that it's
> not true, is I'm advocating state communism like the USSR or china or any
> of the other so-called socialist countries?
What do you call the US's taking taxes and funding
Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon etc. with that money? The way
Halliburton was integrated into the Iraq mess is also commendable.
> I don't know how many times I have to say this, but I do *not* advocate
> state communism. I think it's foolish and doomed to fail as it has done.
> Marx got it wrong. You really need to stop beating this straw man if we're
> to have any rational discourse here.
I agree. Then let's continue dismantling the state.
> Basically the way those countries were set up was to the effect of
> being one big nation-wide corporation where the people at the top leach
> off the workers and everyone's paid according to their rank and their
> individual productive efforts are ignored. Things work the same in
> capitalism, only in capitalism you have the threat of unemployment to keep
> you working at least at a minimum standard.
In Capitalism you earn the fruit or non-fruit of your own working
(and planning, and some luck). There is a reason why people with
a good work ethic (like many Asian-Americans) are doing vastly
better (with twice as many college graduates per population) than
those who play basketball all day, and it's not genetics.
> You on the other hand are basically spouting the same shocked rhetoric I
> hear from every other layman who's accepted everything they've been told
> about the supposed glories of the market without thinking about it too
There's no glory in the market. It's simply the only system that
lets people choose with their money, what is to be produced more
and what less.
Cooperation (and non-profit companies that could do *everything*
that a state-monopoly can now) are possible too. Why are there
churches out there? They aren't paid for by the government, but
people *care* for them.
> hard. If you're like any of the others, your "bitter experience" is
> probably that you grew up in capitalism, continually got told that
> the only alternative is state communism and look how terrible that was,
> and despite all the problems with capitalism at least it's the best out of
> the two alternatives around. Well, were there really only two alternatives
> you may even be right. I don't hold state communism in any higher esteem
> than capitalism. But the fact is that it's not the only alternative to
> state communism and far from the best for reasons I've alluded to in other
> posts.
I've seen people grow up in Germany, I've seen the US and their
work ethic, and overall I conclude that a freeer system would be
better. The current implementation of the US is worse for the poor.
> I have not once advocated coercing anyone. If my ideas don't have popular
> support then I'm satisfied to simply accept that they're not going to
> happen. THE most fundamental premise of the society I'm talking about is
> that coercion be avoided in all its forms. In fact that's where the ideas
> of minimising unequal distribution of wealth and (though I haven't yet
> said it explicitly, surely it should be obvious by now) abolishing the
> state come from. If I were to advocate coercing everyone into my system
> then I really would be being inconsistent.
What's the problem in distribution of wealth? Rich people aren't
the problem (the more the better!); barriers that prevent poor
people from making money are.
Just because the current, totally broken system results in more
rich and more poor people doesn't imply that people getting rich
are a bad thing!
> I'd like to think that people may adopt my ideas without coercion because
> they're inherently superior to what we currently have. Just like java
> programmers switching to lisp. Of course it's an uphill battle because
> just like with Java, people prefer to believe in the status quo than do
> any real research on the alternatives (how many points do I get for
> sneaking an on-topic subject in? ;).
They can, but they may not *force* me to use Java. If I use it
for a job because my boss tells me, that's different. I can quit
or play the game.
> Given that I'm against coercion, I also don't suggest that markets be
> "illegalised" or anything so ridiculous. So yeah, people probably will set
> up markets. There are variants of my theory which allow for
> non-capitalist markets and if their advocates can make it work without
> it degenerating into people coercing and exploiting each other then good
> on them. I just tend to think it's more convenient and socially humane to
> work on principles of cooperation than principles of competition.
All the people in Germany and France that cry for more socialism
and less liberalism can create their own communities. They can
buy grain from Jose Bov�, not buy from McDonalds, not trade with
foreign countries, create their own tax pool into which all
members pay, give lots of welfare to everyone, set up a complex
tax-accounting institution, whatever they want.
They *only* need to leave the rest of us in peace. They can even
refuse to ever to pay welfare to us if that makes them feel safer.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>> What's the problem in distribution of wealth? Rich people aren't the
>> problem (the more the better!); barriers that prevent poor people from
>> making money are.
Rajappa Iyer <···@panix.com> wrote on 06 May 2005 18:0:
> If history is any guide, then, without state intervention, wealth
> tends to get concentrated with a few individuals who then employ this
> wealth to erect precisely those barriers that you find problematic.
But surely "the American dream" is a counterexample. Unless you think it's
a myth?
Yes, plenty of Americans became these "few wealthy individuals". I'll agree
with that. But they haven't seemed to be able to raise significant barriers
to prevent new poor people from also becoming rich.
In fact, if you look at wealth over generation, there is tons of turnover in
the US. Especially compared to something like medieval Europe with landed
nobility, where hundreds of years would go by with the same bloodlines
controlling the same assets. In the US, family assets tend to get divided
among heirs, and then wasted or lost, such that by two or three generations
from the original winner it's tough to find much difference between the
descendants and an average citizen.
In the US, the newspapers are filled with stories about how some immigrant
came ashore with nothing, and became a big success. Or a startup by poor and
inexperienced (but very smart) grad students (like the Google guys) who take
on huge established monopolies (like Microsoft and maybe Yahoo), yet overnight
beat them at their own game.
I don't disagree that the US has wealth concentration. But I don't think
those wealthy folks have all that much power (from a historical perspective)
to prevent other poor people from also becoming rich.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr.
Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come
out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that
could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage
Rajappa Iyer wrote:
> Are you speaking of recent history or or you speaking of the 18th and
> 19th centuries? If the latter, then I submit that the only people who
> got wealthy were robber barons, genocidal land grabbers and
> prospectors. If the former, then it is precisely because of state
Talking about the textile industrialization, for instance, all
those people weren't forced to work in the big factories. They
could have continued to work with simple mechanical tools,
almost-starving on their farms. But they chose to buy the cheaper
clothes from those big factories. They chose to work there. They
could have banded together, sharing food, working together, maybe
even constructing tools themselves. Their problem was their
non-existent education I'd say, as they were all simple
farm-people and workers and had been like that all their lives.
> intervention and redistribution of wealth that there has been upward
> mobility. Incidentally, upward mobility dramatically increased with
> the New Deal and in the last decade or so when many of the New Deal
> programs have been dismantled, we have also seen a dramatic reduction
> in the upward mobility.
I've heard that in the US more poor people study than in Germany
where education is FREE (ok, it mostly sucks, but it's free).
In general, in the last decades many people have moved upward from
previously-worker families by studying. I don't believe that is
because of welfare. Welfare doesn't educate people, it doesn't
give them jobs. It simply and only *feeds* them, just like
charity, which was traditionally done by the churches, btw (in
Europe).
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Rajappa Iyer wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>I've heard that in the US more poor people study than in Germany where
>>education is FREE (ok, it mostly sucks, but it's free).
>
>
> Education up to high school in the US is also "free" (paid for by
> taxes). Let's find another strawman, shall we?
Methinks, you refuse to listen...
More people in the US *study*, that means at college, even though
state schools aren't cheap, either (even with scholarships). A
high-school degree also doesn't really give you much job choice
anymore (and thus upward-mobility).
>>In general, in the last decades many people have moved upward from
>>previously-worker families by studying. I don't believe that is
>>because of welfare. Welfare doesn't educate people, it doesn't give
>>them jobs. It simply and only *feeds* them, just like charity, which
>>was traditionally done by the churches, btw (in Europe).
>
>
> What you believe and what the evidence shows are quite different.
> I've always held that when facts bely one's opinions, it's more
> appropriate to change one's opinions.
Yes, and what does that have to do with welfare and
upward-mobility? Welfare doesn't educate people, it doesn't give
them jobs. It simply feeds them.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> wrote:
> In the US, the newspapers are filled with stories about how some immigrant
> came ashore with nothing, and became a big success. Or a startup by poor and
> inexperienced (but very smart) grad students (like the Google guys) who take
> on huge established monopolies (like Microsoft and maybe Yahoo), yet overnight
> beat them at their own game.
A lot of these stories are somewhat less remarkable as a counterexample
if you aren't looking at a subset of the whole universe.
From the standpoint of someone who is actually poor, and not a
descendant of the middle class in a temporary state of low/no income,
someone in grad school is not poor at all. I recall a conversation
when my wife was beginning grad school with someone who had come from a
family who lived in inner city new haven and had very little -- and more
importantly, did not share in the majority middle class culture. To
him, he had hit the jackpot by getting into Yale Divinity on
scholarship. Others around the table probably had no more income or
assets than he, but among those folks (all white middle class) it was
pretty much expected that if you were smart and worked hard, and wanted
to go to college and grad school, that it was a reasonable, achievable
goal. To us, grad school was a state of (relative) poverty compared to
the way in which we expected to live most of our lives. To him, it was
about the same as his previous normal existence except that it offered a
hope of real wealth by joining the mainstream middle class culture.
And we're talking a divinity degree here, not an engineering degree.
I don't know what all immigrants start out with in the way of cultural
barriers to wealth, but I suspect that many of those who hit it big did
not start out with the kind of working class or poverty class culture
that a lot of real poor folks have.
I think if you ask most of these folks who make the transition from
working class to big-time rich, they will tell you that they had to
break down a number of cultural barriers to do what they did, barriers
that most people don't have the persistence (or whatever) to break. If
you are of the mainstream middle-class culture, there are a lot fewer
such barriers.
When you talk about taking on big monopolies, there's another issue --
You don't necessarily read about the thousands of stories of people who
tried to take on Microsoft and got chewed up and spit out. Everyone
knows about the one or two who beat them and made a billion dollars and
a lot of people know about the few hundred who did well enough to get
bought out by them and made a few million dollars, but these folks are
the exception, not the rule, *even* among those who could produce a
solid, competitive product.
Monopoly power is real. For the most part, despite having what almost
everyone universally describes as a weak, buggy product, microsoft has
only been successfully beaten by people who saw a market before they
did, *never* truly head to head on something Microsoft considered
important early on. On the other side, Microsoft has often been able to
leverage their monopoly power to take over markets already inhabited by
products that most people originally considered superior.
That's been going on for the last 20-30 years. IBM lost their similar
monopoly by making a bad deal with Microsoft. While Microsoft's
ascendance over IBM is often cited as an example of the little guy
beating the big guy, what really seems to have happened is that the
little guy semi-swindled the big guy into selling his monopoly power for
a song, becoming the big guy. Obviously it's more complicated than
that, but it's not a huge stretch to consider IBM in the 60s and 70s and
Microsoft in the 80s, 90s and 00s the *same* monopoly under different
ownership.
In any case, I think there are significantly more barriers to wealth and
class movement in the US than the rosy Horatio Alger archetype lets on.
Michael
--
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. -- Dwight Eisenhower
"In Christ there is no killing" -- St. Patrick
···@panix.com (Michael Sullivan) wrote on Sat, 7 May 2005 :
> From the standpoint of someone who is actually poor, and not a
> descendant of the middle class in a temporary state of low/no income,
> someone in grad school is not poor at all.
They have little assets/wealth, and little annual income (below the poverty
line for a family of four).
But yes, they have excellent education and work ethic.
Those two items are the real problem for most people in poverty. Not the lack
of money.
> Others around the table probably had no more income or assets than he, but
> among those folks (all white middle class) it was pretty much expected that
> if you were smart and worked hard, and wanted to go to college and grad
> school, that it was a reasonable, achievable goal.
That's actually true for anyone, whether poor or not.
But I agree with you that some subcultures don't promote those values.
It isn't "society" holding them down, though. Nor is it the rich people.
They're holding themselves down. The opportunity is there.
> I don't know what all immigrants start out with in the way of cultural
> barriers to wealth, but I suspect that many of those who hit it big did
> not start out with the kind of working class or poverty class culture
> that a lot of real poor folks have.
Check out the history of US immigrants. The majority arrived poor. But
with an excellent work ethic. Some of the most successful over time, like
Jews and Asians, also put enormous value on education.
"Poverty class culture" is another story. Other US subpopulations, such as
poor urban blacks sometimes have a culture of rejecting "acting white", which
unfortunately for them can include education. As you suggest, that is a
route to multi-generational poverty.
But again, none of this is the rich erecting barriers to the poor acquiring
their own wealth, which was the original topic.
> I think if you ask most of these folks who make the transition from
> working class to big-time rich, they will tell you that they had to
> break down a number of cultural barriers to do what they did, barriers
> that most people don't have the persistence (or whatever) to break. If
> you are of the mainstream middle-class culture, there are a lot fewer
> such barriers.
These cultural barriers are internal. They are not created defensively by
those who have already succeeded, in order to keep the poor in poverty.
> In any case, I think there are significantly more barriers to wealth and
> class movement in the US than the rosy Horatio Alger archetype lets on.
It isn't easy to acquire wealth. But there are fewer barriers in the
capitalist free-market modern US than there have ever been anywhere in history.
"The American Dream" is a legitimate hope, not a false one.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to
have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at
how much the old man had learned in seven years. -- Mark Twain
Don Geddis wrote:
> ···@panix.com (Michael Sullivan) wrote on Sat, 7 May 2005 :
>
>>From the standpoint of someone who is actually poor, and not a
>>descendant of the middle class in a temporary state of low/no income,
>>someone in grad school is not poor at all.
>
>
> They have little assets/wealth, and little annual income (below the poverty
> line for a family of four).
>
> But yes, they have excellent education and work ethic.
>
> Those two items are the real problem for most people in poverty. Not the lack
> of money.
Most middle class people are only situationally poor. The real
lower class is in generational poverty. Most generationally poor
people don't have the "stick with it" work ethic, they don't think
long term (don't save money) etc.
(These aren't my opinions, but the stuff they teach you in a basic
sociology class.)
Regarding thinking long-term I can't understand them at all; to me
rational planning leads to long-term thinking. But then I was
brought up in a more middle class environment...
One would hope that public schools focus on these problems, so
that poor people get some of the middle class mindset. OTOH, I've
heard that the poorer US schools don't even satisfy building
standards (such as a ceiling that's rain-proof) and can't afford
any books.
The poors' problem in my view is poor organization. They all keep
running from minimum-wage job to minimum-wage job (if they have
one) and thus serve the better-off people, instead of doing more
stuff within their own community. If there's a poor farmer, a
poor baker, and a poor teacher, they could all work for each
other, instead of being slaves for other classes with nothing in
it for them (since then they must import expensive teachers, buy
expensive text books...).
>>Others around the table probably had no more income or assets than he, but
>>among those folks (all white middle class) it was pretty much expected that
>>if you were smart and worked hard, and wanted to go to college and grad
>>school, that it was a reasonable, achievable goal.
>
>
> That's actually true for anyone, whether poor or not.
>
> But I agree with you that some subcultures don't promote those values.
> It isn't "society" holding them down, though. Nor is it the rich people.
> They're holding themselves down. The opportunity is there.
Not for them. They never learned to think long-term. I can't
follow that, but I don't know what it's like to starve.
>>In any case, I think there are significantly more barriers to wealth and
>>class movement in the US than the rosy Horatio Alger archetype lets on.
>
>
> It isn't easy to acquire wealth. But there are fewer barriers in the
> capitalist free-market modern US than there have ever been anywhere in history.
> "The American Dream" is a legitimate hope, not a false one.
That's kind of true, if you can get the funds (credit) to pay for
an education. For the poor poor that's mostly out of the question
I think (result of keeping only to their own, like the inner-city
blacks you mentioned).
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Rajappa Iyer <···@panix.com> wrote on 07 May 2005 02:5:
> Are you speaking of recent history or or you speaking of the 18th and
> 19th centuries? If the latter, then I submit that the only people who
> got wealthy were robber barons, genocidal land grabbers and
> prospectors.
Yes, that's probably mostly true.
> If the former, then it is precisely because of state intervention and
> redistribution of wealth that there has been upward mobility.
Well, yes, state intervention is required to prevent monopolies. (And
genocide.)
But redistribution of wealth has little to do with upward mobility.
> Incidentally, upward mobility dramatically increased with the New Deal and
> in the last decade or so when many of the New Deal programs have been
> dismantled, we have also seen a dramatic reduction in the upward mobility.
Evidence?
In 1938, what fraction of individuals that were poor in one year entered the
middle class in the next? What fraction of middle class people became wealthy?
In 1998, what were the fractions?
I'm sure you don't know, but I'd be astonished if there was a "dramatic
reduction" in upward mobility between those two periods.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
for.eign aid ['fo.r-*n 'a-d], n.: The transfer of money from poor people in
rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
> Evidence?
>
> In 1938, what fraction of individuals that were poor in one year entered the
> middle class in the next? What fraction of middle class people became wealthy?
> In 1998, what were the fractions?
80% of millionaires are first generation:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4217
> I'm sure you don't know, but I'd be astonished if there was a "dramatic
> reduction" in upward mobility between those two periods.
I'd bet it was less in 1938.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein
Rajappa Iyer wrote:
> http://economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3518560
Nice article. It's interesting that the rich are so good at
bonding (all those mentioned secret circles, fraternities,
business clubs, elite universities), while middle and working
class mainly compete against each other to get one of the few
vacant upward-mobility spots.
People need to associate more, instead of always looking up to the
elite.
The same with Europe and the USA. People in the USA aren't
particularly interested in world politics. They don't know at all
what's happening in Europe or Japan.
But everybody in Europe knows quite well how the US economy is
doing. So instead of living our own life, creating our own
economy, yes, having our own big software companies, we always
look over the Atlantic, at the holy Buck and hope that their
economy will do well, because ours seems to not have a life of its
own, but only follow the US economy like a hungry dog follows the
hot dog man.
But well: as the article says the majority of Europeans believes
that their life isn't in their own hands anyway. Their problem.
By the way: it would be interesting to see how one could increase
upward mobility. I don't see a solution other than loosing
barriers of entry. Small money-shifts (like welfare), taxes and
regulations might keep a few people from starving, but it
certainly doesn't allow a poor person to take up with the elite.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Rajappa Iyer <···@panix.com> wrote on 09 May 2005 12:0:
> > Incidentally, upward mobility dramatically increased with the New Deal and
>> > in the last decade or so when many of the New Deal programs have been
>> > dismantled, we have also seen a dramatic reduction in the upward mobility.
>>
>> Evidence?
>>
> http://economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3518560
Interesting artcile. I note that most of the data compares the 1970's and
1980's with the 1990's. This hardly tells you much about the New Deal effects
from the 1930's.
The article also has a clearly biased tone, beginning with much irrelevant
information about income "gaps", and how the rich are relatively richer today
than they used to be. That's true, but has nothing to do with whether the
poor can become rich.
Finally, the very article you referenced includes quotes like these:
Not all social scientists accept the conclusion that mobility is
declining. Gary Solon, of the University of Michigan, argues that
there is no evidence of any change in social-mobility rates, down or
up.
And finally, we can look at some of the actual data they quote:
42% of those born into the poorest fifth ended up where they
started - at the bottom. Another 24% moved up slightly to the
next-to-bottom group. Only 6% made it to the top fifth. Upward
mobility was particularly low for black families. On the other hand,
37% of those born into the top fifth remained there, whereas barely
7% of those born into the top 20% ended up in the bottom fifth. A
person born into the top fifth is over five times as likely to end up
at the top as a person born into the bottom fifth.
These numbers don't seem shocking at all. OF COURSE there is some inertia
in financial outcomes over time. It isn't like society is a random draw every
few years, where your previous situation has nothing at all to do with your
next income level.
But if you look at those actual numbers, it appears that, for BOTH the richest
and the poorest groups, about 40% of them stayed in their original group
(over "32 years or two generations"), while about 6-7% of them switched from
one extreme to the other.
Let's try to look at some differences over time:
In 1984-90, 56% and 54% of households changed their rankings in terms
of income and consumption respectively. In 1994-99, only 52% and 49%
changed their rankings.
Those numbers don't seem hugely different to me. And they have little to do
with your New Deal claim in any case.
In contrast, let's look at Pascal's suggested article:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4217
where we see these facts:
80 percent of today's American millionaires are first-generation rich.
and
According to IRS tax data, 85.8 percent of tax filers in the bottom
fifth in 1979 had moved on to a higher quintile, and often to the top
quintile, by 1988.
So, in ten years, 85% of the poorest individuals had escaped from their
poverty conditions.
Sure sounds like a lot of income mobility to me. What again were these
barriers that the rich were supposed to have erected, in order to keep the
poor down permanently?
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
When Marta called me a wimp, my first response was a strong desire to cry. But
then I got so angry, I mumbled out, "I guess I am."
-- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey [1999]
Rajappa Iyer wrote:
> Sorry to follow up on my own posting, but check out May 13th issue of
> the Wall Street Journal. It has a page one article about reduced
> class mobility in the US compared to, say, Europe.
Thank you! I believe the entire article is online at:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05133/504149.stm
It's entertaining how much filler they couch the point in. And how
little US economists know about the US. The state of CS is probably far
better.
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> All the people in Germany and France that cry for more socialism and
> less liberalism can create their own communities. They can buy grain
> from Jose Bov�, not buy from McDonalds, not trade with foreign
> countries, create their own tax pool into which all members pay, give
> lots of welfare to everyone, set up a complex tax-accounting
> institution, whatever they want.
>
> They *only* need to leave the rest of us in peace. They can even
> refuse to ever to pay welfare to us if that makes them feel safer.
Are these paragraphs intended to suggest that "all the
people in Germany and France" are not, in fact, "leaving
the rest of us in peace"? Did Germany invade the USA
while I wasn't watching, or something? Who, in this context,
are "the rest of us", anyway?
--
Gareth McCaughan
.sig under construc
Gareth McCaughan wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>
>
>>All the people in Germany and France that cry for more socialism and
>>less liberalism can create their own communities. They can buy grain
>>from Jose Bov�, not buy from McDonalds, not trade with foreign
>>countries, create their own tax pool into which all members pay, give
>>lots of welfare to everyone, set up a complex tax-accounting
>>institution, whatever they want.
>>
>>They *only* need to leave the rest of us in peace. They can even
>>refuse to ever to pay welfare to us if that makes them feel safer.
>
>
> Are these paragraphs intended to suggest that "all the
> people in Germany and France" are not, in fact, "leaving
> the rest of us in peace"? Did Germany invade the USA
> while I wasn't watching, or something? Who, in this context,
> are "the rest of us", anyway?
*Lots* of them want more socialism, more regulations, more laws
against firing workers (as if that would fight unemployment!
maybe it prevents companies from *hiring* people).
If I ever were to have my own company and would want to hire
people, all these regulations would heavily affect me, so
definitely not leave me in peace.
I was saying that as much communism as "they" want can exist
within liberalism, but liberalism can't exist within an oppressive
socialism.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> *Lots* of them want more socialism, more regulations, more laws against
> firing workers (as if that would fight unemployment! maybe it prevents
> companies from *hiring* people).
Lots? Schröder just barely won the election in sep 2002.
You do have a point about the organization of the labour market though.
It is difficult for a company to change course, since it is difficult
to fire employees. Note though that the countries in the EU have
different organizations of the labour market. In Denmark the labour market
is more flexible; it is relatively easy to fire employees. In order for
this to work, we have higher unemployment benefits - and taxes.
--
Jens Axel Søgaard
Jens Axel S�gaard wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>
>> *Lots* of them want more socialism, more regulations, more laws
>> against firing workers (as if that would fight unemployment! maybe it
>> prevents companies from *hiring* people).
>
>
> Lots? Schr�der just barely won the election in sep 2002.
Yes, even more people want the right-wing parties' big-company
friendly politics, with more funding for nuclear energy, with
software patents, with good old animal-unfriendly farming (quasi
torturing chickens etc.). That's the most shocking.
But still almost half of all Germans voted labor-green, and the
overwhelming majority of young people (students mostly, since they
don't really know work-life reality) seem to be in love with
anti-Capitalism in whatever form. They don't really seem to have
alternatives or concrete concepts, since they aren't in touch with
reality as it is. ;)
> You do have a point about the organization of the labour market though.
> It is difficult for a company to change course, since it is difficult
> to fire employees. Note though that the countries in the EU have
> different organizations of the labour market. In Denmark the labour market
> is more flexible; it is relatively easy to fire employees. In order for
> this to work, we have higher unemployment benefits - and taxes.
Interesting. Unemployment benefits should be done individually,
though, through insuring yourself privately. Otherwise that seems
like the right strategy. Government could still provide basic
anti-starving protection. :)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Rajappa Iyer wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>What's the problem in distribution of wealth? Rich people aren't the
>>problem (the more the better!); barriers that prevent poor people from
>>making money are.
>
>
> If history is any guide, then, without state intervention, wealth
> tends to get concentrated with a few individuals who then employ this
> wealth to erect precisely those barriers that you find problematic.
> What is your solution?
Sure, money buys state. Today you see big companies buying laws
from our parliaments. If there are no laws allowed, except laws
governing freedom and property (murder, theft, fraud is not
allowed), then there is no way for them to create them. Of course
they could enslave lots of people (if they agree), just like I
said that anyone could create their own Communism in a free
society. I won't care about that. I just don't want to be part
of it.
If Mr Rich says he wants software patents, why should anybody
accept that? In our society laws are decreed by the state, who
has the monopoly on police and military, so we can't really do
anything...
Anyway, the fight for freedom is constantly ongoing; it's just
that in a decentralized system it would be harder to gain power
over people than in our current centralized system, where you just
bribe the hub and all the spokes follow on their own.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
On Fri, 06 May 2005 14:53:31 -0500, Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> Robert Marlow wrote:
>
> What do you call the US's taking taxes and funding Lockheed-Martin,
> Raytheon etc. with that money? The way Halliburton was integrated into
> the Iraq mess is also commendable.
I call that capitalism protecting its interests. The thing people who cry
for less state and more capitalism don't realise is that capitalism
requires a state to make it work. More on that below.
> In Capitalism you earn the fruit or non-fruit of your own working (and
> planning, and some luck). There is a reason why people with a good work
> ethic (like many Asian-Americans) are doing vastly better (with twice as
> many college graduates per population) than those who play basketball all
> day, and it's not genetics.
I challenge you to find me one single person who has gotten decidedly rich
by efforts of labour alone. The very problem with capitalism is that
it makes it impossible to get wealthy only by working. No matter how hard
those Asian Americans work, they're not going to get rich unless they play
the interest or rent game.
> What's the problem in distribution of wealth? Rich people aren't the
> problem (the more the better!); barriers that prevent poor people from
> making money are.
>
> Just because the current, totally broken system results in more rich and
> more poor people doesn't imply that people getting rich are a bad thing!
Indeed it doesn't. But what needs more consideration is HOW people get
rich under the current, totally broken system and recognise why it's
flawed and what needs to change to fix it.
Crash course on economics without all the rationalism crap.
In reality there is only one source of wealth: the application of labour
to natural resources (including natural resources already transferred by
labour previously). How do you get raw materials? Labour digs it out of
the ground. How do you produce those raw materials into higher forms?
Labour using machinery on the raw materials. Where did the machinery come
from? Some combination of the last two steps.
Obviously, if labour is the source of wealth, labour is where the
rewards of wealth ought to go.
But that's not what happens in capitalism. In capitalism, capitalists by
"owning" capital investment, insist that in order for labour to have
access to the capital necessary for production (capital which
originated through efforts of labour to begin with) labour surrender some
of its wealth to the capitalist in order to pay interest to the
capitalist. Likewise, the land owner insists than in order for labour to
have access to natural resources to live and work on, labour must
surrender some of its wealth to the land owner as rent.
Note that the idea of owning is not in and of itself a way of producing
wealth. Without labour the capital and land would just sit there. Moreover
without this idea of property capital would already be in the hands of
labour who produced it to begin with. Land is free for the taking except
where the idea of property puts artificial barriers up to its use.
So we have this idea of property. Property has in this case become a
means of appropriating wealth from labour by force. In the words of an old
guy named Proudhon, "Property is theft". I know that suggestion is
going to piss off a lot of people who haven't heard the idea already.
"Gasp, but isn't property one of the inalienable rights?" Sure, look what
people made up the list of inalienable rights. Property owners of course.
Property is state-sanctioned theft.
I'll clarify here that by property I don't mean the clothes on your back,
the shoes on your feet or your home and its personal contents. Those
things may be distinguished from this idea by being called possessions. In
the context of what I'm speaking here, property soley refers to the land
and capital which labour requires to be productive and would otherwise
have free access to if it weren't for the state enforced idea of property.
Property is only possible through state force. Alternatively, without a
state, capitalists and land owners need to have their own forces to
dish out any violence required to protect their property interests.
Capitalism without a state is just corporations with their own military.
Essentially the idea of a state would simply switch from being borders
of controlled land to being borders of controlled capital.
Lets consider some of the problems with capitalism and see what effect
property has on them:
1. Wealth inequality. Like I said, you can't get rich through labour.
There's only so many hours in a day someone can work. The way to get rich
in capitalism is to make money without working. So, by accumulating
property in capitalism people are able to accumulate more and more wealth
without ever having to lift a finger, the upper bounds being limitless.
Not everyone can be a capitalist or land-owner so we have people at the
other end of the spectrum resigned to scraping all their earnings from
underpaid jobs (ie labour which capitalism has already milked nearly dry)
or not having jobs at all.
2. State violence. Property's gotta be enforced somehow. Look at the US'
huge defence budget and all the wars it wages. The US has one of the
bloodiest histories out there as well as one of the most obsessed
capitalist mentalities. Not a coincidence. Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama,
Libya, El Salvador, Iraq, Lebanon, Philippines, Cuba, Korea, Vietnam,
Chile, Dominican Republic. Dig deep enough and you'll find property at
stake or at least the potential threat to property. Look at the cold war
against state communism - I mean really, why should the US care about
other countries becoming state communist? State communism is a threat to
US ideals of property of course.
3. Environmental externalities. This is what you get when a corporation is
given exclusive rights to a natural resource. With property enforcement
they're free to do what they like with the natural resource. In the
capitalists' interest that involves milking it for all the profit they can
get. Who cares what the results are? It's not like the capitalist would
ever choose to live there or anything.
4. Unemployment. Really, why need there be anyone unemployed? If we
stripped peoples working hours down from 12 and 16 hrs a day, perhaps
down even to as low as 4 hrs a day, the resulting demand for labour would
easily soak up any unemployment. There'd be no reason for poverty due to
unemployment and nor would social welfare for the unemployed and
work-capable be necessary meaning that cut in hours pays itself off in
not having to pay for unemployed people unnecessarily. But that doesn't
work in capitalism's interests. Capitalism requires that there be
unemployment so labour always has the the threat of unemployment to keep
it under thumb.
>> I'd like to think that people may adopt my ideas without coercion
>> because they're inherently superior to what we currently have. Just like
>> java programmers switching to lisp. Of course it's an uphill battle
>> because just like with Java, people prefer to believe in the status quo
>> than do any real research on the alternatives (how many points do I get
>> for sneaking an on-topic subject in? ;).
>
> They can, but they may not *force* me to use Java. If I use it for a job
> because my boss tells me, that's different. I can quit or play the game.
I can't figure out the relevance of what you're saying here. I was
merely describing why people might adopt my ideas without need of force.
Robert Marlow wrote:
> I challenge you to find me one single person who has gotten decidedly rich
> by efforts of labour alone. The very problem with capitalism is that
> it makes it impossible to get wealthy only by working. No matter how hard
> those Asian Americans work, they're not going to get rich unless they play
> the interest or rent game.
Not *RICH*, but rich enough to live well, I'm sure.
> In reality there is only one source of wealth: the application of labour
> to natural resources (including natural resources already transferred by
> labour previously). How do you get raw materials? Labour digs it out of
> the ground. How do you produce those raw materials into higher forms?
> Labour using machinery on the raw materials. Where did the machinery come
> from? Some combination of the last two steps.
All material products, yes. But you say, services are useless
then? I think everything I can buy might have use. If it has use
to me, I buy it.
> Obviously, if labour is the source of wealth, labour is where the
> rewards of wealth ought to go.
Useful, necessary labor is usually rewarded by good pay, so that
good workers don't run away. Why do lots of IT people earn
$40000+ a year?
> But that's not what happens in capitalism. In capitalism, capitalists by
> "owning" capital investment, insist that in order for labour to have
> access to the capital necessary for production (capital which
> originated through efforts of labour to begin with) labour surrender some
> of its wealth to the capitalist in order to pay interest to the
Money is a unit of exchange. If you want to buy machinery to
start your own company, you have to borrow that money, if you
don't have it.
> capitalist. Likewise, the land owner insists than in order for labour to
> have access to natural resources to live and work on, labour must
> surrender some of its wealth to the land owner as rent.
Land ownership is a tough question, since land is limited. The
cases in South America, where people are practically slaves,
because they don't even officially own their land anymore, are
sick, indeed. There I can understand if some form of socialism
develops, so that people can work their own land. But it doesn't
really make sense in an industrial country which produces much
more food than it can eat, and where most people don't farm anyway.
> Note that the idea of owning is not in and of itself a way of producing
> wealth. Without labour the capital and land would just sit there. Moreover
> without this idea of property capital would already be in the hands of
> labour who produced it to begin with. Land is free for the taking except
> where the idea of property puts artificial barriers up to its use.
True, but money is just the transfer of power. When millions of
people drink and pay for Coke, then they give that company power
to be able to do (buy) other things in return. Without a market,
often resources are allocated without rhyme or reason.
> So we have this idea of property. Property has in this case become a
> means of appropriating wealth from labour by force. In the words of an old
> guy named Proudhon, "Property is theft". I know that suggestion is
> going to piss off a lot of people who haven't heard the idea already.
> "Gasp, but isn't property one of the inalienable rights?" Sure, look what
> people made up the list of inalienable rights. Property owners of course.
> Property is state-sanctioned theft.
The state is only something that people make up. Without them it
doesn't exist. So if we have property, then because people
respect that other people trade for stuff. If I give you ten cows
for a little house, then why shouldn't I own it? What about a
machine for sprinkling my lawn? What about a machine that can
build cars?
> I'll clarify here that by property I don't mean the clothes on your back,
> the shoes on your feet or your home and its personal contents. Those
> things may be distinguished from this idea by being called possessions. In
You can trade for possessions and machinery. Why make an
arbitrary distinction?
> the context of what I'm speaking here, property soley refers to the land
> and capital which labour requires to be productive and would otherwise
> have free access to if it weren't for the state enforced idea of property.
>
> Property is only possible through state force. Alternatively, without a
> state, capitalists and land owners need to have their own forces to
> dish out any violence required to protect their property interests.
Exactly, someone who wants to steal stuff without giving anything
in return, is fought. This has been that way since the beginning
of time. Hunters and gatherers: finders, keepers. Sure, food was
usually shared. But I'm sure, the people who did the main work
(such as gathering huge amounts of fruit) got the biggest share,
the choice of women etc. whatever you consider wealth in the
primal human context.
> Capitalism without a state is just corporations with their own military.
> Essentially the idea of a state would simply switch from being borders
> of controlled land to being borders of controlled capital.
But these military would protect your stuff, not steal stuff from
somebody else. So what's wrong with that? What else does the
police do (except that the police is often racist, doesn't really
help the poor etc.)?
> Lets consider some of the problems with capitalism and see what effect
> property has on them:
>
> 1. Wealth inequality. Like I said, you can't get rich through labour.
> There's only so many hours in a day someone can work. The way to get rich
> in capitalism is to make money without working. So, by accumulating
> property in capitalism people are able to accumulate more and more wealth
> without ever having to lift a finger, the upper bounds being limitless.
> Not everyone can be a capitalist or land-owner so we have people at the
> other end of the spectrum resigned to scraping all their earnings from
> underpaid jobs (ie labour which capitalism has already milked nearly dry)
> or not having jobs at all.
You gain stuff by selling stuff. Your labor is limited, true.
But you can create stuff and sell it for more. The same works
with company shares or with lending out money, for instance. The
premise is that you can only lend money that you don't use to buy
nice shiny cars. So living with less luxury rewards you, because
you offer your capital to others who want to invest in in, say,
machinery.
> 2. State violence. Property's gotta be enforced somehow. Look at the US'
> huge defence budget and all the wars it wages. The US has one of the
> bloodiest histories out there as well as one of the most obsessed
> capitalist mentalities. Not a coincidence. Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama,
> Libya, El Salvador, Iraq, Lebanon, Philippines, Cuba, Korea, Vietnam,
> Chile, Dominican Republic. Dig deep enough and you'll find property at
> stake or at least the potential threat to property. Look at the cold war
> against state communism - I mean really, why should the US care about
> other countries becoming state communist? State communism is a threat to
> US ideals of property of course.
Communism didn't threaten the state, it threatened the US citizens
that don't really seem to like the idea.
Vietnam and Iraq sucked, but the Cold war made some sense to me.
It was perceived as a threat, not just by a minority.
> 3. Environmental externalities. This is what you get when a corporation is
> given exclusive rights to a natural resource. With property enforcement
> they're free to do what they like with the natural resource. In the
> capitalists' interest that involves milking it for all the profit they can
> get. Who cares what the results are? It's not like the capitalist would
> ever choose to live there or anything.
You can only poison a river, if that one's owner doesn't care,
because e.g. the river belongs to a corrupt government. An
American Capitalist wouldn't be happy about you poisoning his
water supply etc.
> 4. Unemployment. Really, why need there be anyone unemployed? If we
> stripped peoples working hours down from 12 and 16 hrs a day, perhaps
> down even to as low as 4 hrs a day, the resulting demand for labour would
> easily soak up any unemployment. There'd be no reason for poverty due to
> unemployment and nor would social welfare for the unemployed and
> work-capable be necessary meaning that cut in hours pays itself off in
> not having to pay for unemployed people unnecessarily. But that doesn't
> work in capitalism's interests. Capitalism requires that there be
> unemployment so labour always has the the threat of unemployment to keep
> it under thumb.
Apart from those unfortunate who just *can't* work, those who are
unemployed don't offer anything that a company needs at the
moment. Thus there is no point in employing them anywhere, or
they would get paid. Those who care that they have to eat and a
home etc. pay them charity (and obviously, judging from the
criticism I see here, that's many people!). I would do that too,
if I weren't just a puny student.
>>They can, but they may not *force* me to use Java. If I use it for a job
>>because my boss tells me, that's different. I can quit or play the game.
>
>
> I can't figure out the relevance of what you're saying here. I was
> merely describing why people might adopt my ideas without need of force.
They can. I just don't like them forcing their ideas on me. I
don't mind if other people choose other contracts among each
other, such as a communist contract that gives everybody in a
community the same money, if they all work together. On the
contrary, I'd like to see different kinds of communities, but our
government doesn't really allow that.
I'd like to build a web trade platform with a virtual currency
that all people in my area could use as a trade unit. So you
could offer services there, auction or sell stuff, or have your
little store accept that virtual currency. The point would be to
trade without the goverment taxing and caring at all, and to have
people without money (due to poverty, being students, whatever)
being able to trade whatever they might like to trade. I heard
that actually some governments would even tax users of such a
platform, so that it might not be legal. Pity.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uu0lf3jpj.fsf@nhplace.com>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> Robert Marlow wrote:
> > I challenge you to find me one single person who has gotten decidedly rich
> > by efforts of labour alone. The very problem with capitalism is that
> > it makes it impossible to get wealthy only by working. No matter how hard
> > those Asian Americans work, they're not going to get rich unless they play
> > the interest or rent game.
>
> Not *RICH*, but rich enough to live well, I'm sure.
Ah, you mean by saving every penny and investing it in some company
that doesn't get rich by efforts of labor alone.
Or you mean by making just straight salary from a company that sells
something for a cost that is based on more than just labor, without
marking up for other contingencies such as scarcity, perceived value
(ROI for the purchaser), etc.
Surely you don't mean where you advertise to the people buying the
service or product what your costs are, as in, say, a non-profit.
It's always seemed to me especially hard to get rich at a non-profit
because there's such scrutiny on expenses.
Absent data, I'm not sure I believe the above.
> Useful, necessary labor is usually rewarded by good pay, so that good
> workers don't run away. Why do lots of IT people earn $40000+ a year?
Because someone in the equation charges for more than just labor. If the
people buying the product insisted on knowing the size of the company and
the number of customers and the number of years it was worked on in order
to set the price, this could not happen. So you're just hiding the "evil"
of having market-based (i.e., non-labor-based) monetary transfer somewhere
else in the system. You are not being paid for your labor, you're being
paid for the scarcity of what is being produced, that is, its market value.
Also, if you were being paid only for labor, your salary would go down over
time as you aged, because experience is not a property of labor. In fact,
an experienced person may labor less to do the same task. So you're being
paid on productivity or ongoing scarcity of product because each day you
make a new product, not the same one. Assembly line workers are paid for
labor. IT workers are not assembly line workers.
I think it's a total fiction to think that one is simply being paid
for "labor" just because one isn't charging for those other things
that some free software people advance as immoral. Why is charging
for two copies of something you had to produce only once immoral but
charging twice as much for one copy of something someone needs than
something someone doesn't need not immoral. Maybe you could expose
what you need to eat and what is being put in savings and what is
going to fancy stereos and let someone fix a pay on that basis. (Even
in communism, it's too each according to his need, not according to his
want. But we see here no distinction between need and want...)
Also, if you were paid just for labor, you'd be paid the same as
others who work just for labor. But the market pays differently for
different "just labor". So perhaps it's not labor. Or else not just.
> I'd like to build a web trade platform with a virtual currency that
> all people in my area could use as a trade unit. So you could offer
> services there, auction or sell stuff, or have your little store
> accept that virtual currency. The point would be to trade without the
> goverment taxing and caring at all, and to have people without money
> (due to poverty, being students, whatever) being able to trade
> whatever they might like to trade. I heard that actually some
> governments would even tax users of such a platform, so that it might
> not be legal. Pity.
Robert Reich, in his recent book Reason, points out that the desire to
not pay taxes isn't remarkably patriotic. Patriotism is about
sacrifice. It's fine to lobby your country to keep its spending down,
but once it decides what to spend and you decide to be a citizen,
don't you have a certain moral obligation to pay your fair share?
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>Robert Marlow wrote:
>>
>>>I challenge you to find me one single person who has gotten decidedly rich
>>>by efforts of labour alone. The very problem with capitalism is that
>>>it makes it impossible to get wealthy only by working. No matter how hard
>>>those Asian Americans work, they're not going to get rich unless they play
>>>the interest or rent game.
>>
>>Not *RICH*, but rich enough to live well, I'm sure.
>
>
> Ah, you mean by saving every penny and investing it in some company
> that doesn't get rich by efforts of labor alone.
>
> Or you mean by making just straight salary from a company that sells
> something for a cost that is based on more than just labor, without
> marking up for other contingencies such as scarcity, perceived value
> (ROI for the purchaser), etc.
>
> Surely you don't mean where you advertise to the people buying the
> service or product what your costs are, as in, say, a non-profit.
> It's always seemed to me especially hard to get rich at a non-profit
> because there's such scrutiny on expenses.
>
> Absent data, I'm not sure I believe the above.
Maybe it's too late and I'm too tired, but I don't quite get what
you're saying here at all...
>
>>Useful, necessary labor is usually rewarded by good pay, so that good
>>workers don't run away. Why do lots of IT people earn $40000+ a year?
>
>
> Because someone in the equation charges for more than just labor. If the
> people buying the product insisted on knowing the size of the company and
> the number of customers and the number of years it was worked on in order
> to set the price, this could not happen. So you're just hiding the "evil"
> of having market-based (i.e., non-labor-based) monetary transfer somewhere
> else in the system. You are not being paid for your labor, you're being
> paid for the scarcity of what is being produced, that is, its market value.
Exactly. And that's good. Since the scarce good lets me charge
more, competition will rise up to get a piece of the cake. This
reduces the scarcity, to the benefit of all consumers.
What's the point in just paying for labor? Giving everybody the
same wage, no matter what they do, and who needs their stuff?
> Also, if you were being paid only for labor, your salary would go down over
> time as you aged, because experience is not a property of labor. In fact,
> an experienced person may labor less to do the same task. So you're being
> paid on productivity or ongoing scarcity of product because each day you
> make a new product, not the same one. Assembly line workers are paid for
> labor. IT workers are not assembly line workers.
Yes, but if you can charge for not-just-labor, an experienced
person can get what they deserve, which is more, if they are more
productive.
> I think it's a total fiction to think that one is simply being paid
> for "labor" just because one isn't charging for those other things
> that some free software people advance as immoral. Why is charging
> for two copies of something you had to produce only once immoral but
> charging twice as much for one copy of something someone needs than
> something someone doesn't need not immoral. Maybe you could expose
> what you need to eat and what is being put in savings and what is
> going to fancy stereos and let someone fix a pay on that basis. (Even
> in communism, it's too each according to his need, not according to his
> want. But we see here no distinction between need and want...)
And who decides what you need (not want)? Isn't food and clothes
and a home enough? East Germany (the Communist part) used to not
produce enough telephones and (crappy to begin with) cars. People
had to wait for 15 years for either of those products. Well, they
didn't need it, right?
> Also, if you were paid just for labor, you'd be paid the same as
> others who work just for labor. But the market pays differently for
> different "just labor". So perhaps it's not labor. Or else not just.
No, labor has a value attached, in regard to what and how good you
work and how scarce your kind of labor is.
>>I'd like to build a web trade platform with a virtual currency that
>>all people in my area could use as a trade unit. So you could offer
>>services there, auction or sell stuff, or have your little store
>>accept that virtual currency. The point would be to trade without the
>>goverment taxing and caring at all, and to have people without money
>>(due to poverty, being students, whatever) being able to trade
>>whatever they might like to trade. I heard that actually some
>>governments would even tax users of such a platform, so that it might
>>not be legal. Pity.
>
>
> Robert Reich, in his recent book Reason, points out that the desire to
> not pay taxes isn't remarkably patriotic. Patriotism is about
> sacrifice. It's fine to lobby your country to keep its spending down,
> but once it decides what to spend and you decide to be a citizen,
> don't you have a certain moral obligation to pay your fair share?
I'm not a patriot. Never was, never will be. I'm neither a
typical German (whatever that would be), nor do I in any way like
Germany, or most Germans.
I feel much better in pretty much any other country I've been to,
and with the people living in those countries.
I think nationalism is total bull****. I don't usually care where
people are from anyway.
About the moral obligation to my country: well, if I have to
choose, maybe I'll just leave Germany for good. Have to finish my
studies first (transferring doesn't really work well; each time
you lose about a half to a full semester, because something
doesn't go smoothly and unbureaucratic). I never agreed to
anything in my country, and other countries I'd move to also don't
really ask me to agree to anything. It's not that I have a choice
between different degrees of freedom, either. There's totally
unfree with lots of military and even more corruption, and then
there's countries like in Europe and the USA with just a little
corruption. The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Scandinavia also
seem to be doing well, but then they don't have millions of
immigration. I don't know if they'd like millions of fugitive
foreigners come to their well-doing countries.
There are lots of people worldwide who would like to build up
their own state that would be a competition here, but existing
countries take up all earth (except the ice), so there's nowhere
to move to... So we have to find ways to be accepted in our
countries.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> I'm not a patriot. Never was, never will be. I'm neither a
> typical German (whatever that would be), nor do I in any way like
> Germany, or most Germans.
Poor child. Hopefully, at least you like your parents?
> ...
> About the moral obligation to my country: well, if I have to
> choose, maybe I'll just leave Germany for good. Have to finish my
> studies first (transferring doesn't really work well; each time
> you lose about a half to a full semester, because something
> doesn't go smoothly and unbureaucratic).
Yes, this surely is important, because in other countries you might have to
pay fees for studying. After that I'm sure that you'll find another
country where people will like you more.
Nicolas.
Nicolas Neuss wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>I'm not a patriot. Never was, never will be. I'm neither a
>>typical German (whatever that would be), nor do I in any way like
>>Germany, or most Germans.
>
>
> Poor child. Hopefully, at least you like your parents?
I probably only know a couple hundred (thousand?) people
personally, and a third of those are really nice. I just don't
like the general attitude of people. Most of them don't seem to
like me, because I don't conform enough.
>>About the moral obligation to my country: well, if I have to
>>choose, maybe I'll just leave Germany for good. Have to finish my
>>studies first (transferring doesn't really work well; each time
>>you lose about a half to a full semester, because something
>>doesn't go smoothly and unbureaucratic).
>
>
> Yes, this surely is important, because in other countries you might have to
> pay fees for studying. After that I'm sure that you'll find another
> country where people will like you more.
In retrospect I'd rather have picked up a hefty credit and studied
my whole degree in the USA, even if then I'd only have a Bachelor.
My German diploma isn't accepted any more than that (in the USA,
probably true for most of Europe, too), i.e. it isn't recognized
as the Master that it really is (the two 4XX classes I aced in the
US were a piece of cake in comparison to what we do at home).
Still, I learned *nothing* in Germany, even though it was a huge
waste of time (I'd say at least 95% of my computer and
non-computer skills aren't from high school or university; sad but
true; that's also why I highly oppose forcing kids to school as
they do in Germany).
All that Germany did was waste my time, so I'm rather old now,
compared to a typical American with a Bachelor, and I don't have a
degree. I should have known better, but no one told me; well,
everyone tells you to go abroad after the 4th semester, but that's
when I changed universities and home (losing about 2/3 of a
semester), because I wanted to take more advanced stuff abroad later.
The reason I want to finish at home is that every time I change my
university (three different ones; while most students today just
study at one, my dad tells me in his day that was the common thing
to do) I lose a lot of time, because everything is far too
bureaucratic.
Since I probably won't get credit for my US year, it doesn't count
towards my studying time, but even without that my major probably
takes 11 semesters (it's supposed to take 9; median is 13, but
that's lazy loafers living on state money, and maybe some people
with family or working a regular job beside studying).
Most people in Ireland, the US seem to like me, more than Germans
in general. I suppose Spain will be nicer, too, but I'm not too
sure about France (heard bad things about the French and
foreigners), even though I think I'd like it there.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> tells us more about himself:
> [snip]
IMHO your personal problems do not at all belong here. Erik Naggum would
have told you to visit a psychatrist, while I think it would be most
reasonable if you started searching for a girlfriend.
Nicolas.
Nicolas Neuss wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> tells us more about himself:
>
>
>>[snip]
>
>
> IMHO your personal problems do not at all belong here. Erik Naggum would
I could the say the same of your comment saying "poor you, hope
you like your parents". And I interpreted your "After that I'm
sure that you'll find another
country where people will like you more." as asking for an
explanation. Maybe that was wrong and I shouldn't answer you at all.
Problems? No, I'm quite happy. I only tried to explain my
anti-German attitude to another German I suppose. ;)
> have told you to visit a psychatrist, while I think it would be most
> reasonable if you started searching for a girlfriend.
I don't need to comment on this low, baseless insult.
*spits on the ground*
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> Maybe that was wrong and I shouldn't answer you at all.
Precisely.
> ... I don't need to comment on this low, baseless insult.
It was not baseless, because I (as a German) feel myself insulted by you.
And since I continue to think that this is no forum for this nonsense, this
will be my last word in this thread.
Nicolas.
Nicolas Neuss wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
>
>>Maybe that was wrong and I shouldn't answer you at all.
>
>
> Precisely.
But then you make claims that I feel I should respond to.
>>... I don't need to comment on this low, baseless insult.
>
>
> It was not baseless, because I (as a German) feel myself insulted by you.
> And since I continue to think that this is no forum for this nonsense, this
> will be my last word in this thread.
If you feel insulted by me describing (in this thread that made
you respond) how bureaucracy on German universities prolonged my
studies, and that I'd rather study in the US, even though it costs
much more, then I'm sorry about that.
My statements, that *in general* I feel that lots of Germans don't
like me (unlike people in other countries) and that therefore I
don't like them, wasn't referring to you, either.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
>>>>> "KMP" == Kent M Pitman <Kent> writes:
[...]
KMP> Robert Reich, in his recent book Reason, points out that the
KMP> desire to not pay taxes isn't remarkably patriotic.
The act of not doing so is surely illegal. The rest is cheap
demagoguery. That people people who once served in government can
classify 'desires' about laws in terms of all-good patriotism w/o
getting much in the way of an adverse reaction is probably caused by
the same kind of confused apathy that lets them get away with naming
laws 'patriot.'
[...]
KMP> Patriotism is about sacrifice. It's fine to lobby your
KMP> country to keep its spending down, but once it decides what
KMP> to spend and you decide to be a citizen, don't you have a
KMP> certain moral obligation to pay your fair share?
People pay taxes out of fear of the government or out of igorance.
Maybe popular understanding of morality figures into stuff like
deciding not to steal or kill people, but I have seen no evidence that
a notion of moral obligation come into play when people pay taxes.
How could it? People don't get bills saying "here's the itemized
spending we decided on, this is what you owe" they instead deal with
something like a high-end software salesman. customer: how much?
salesman: how much do you have?
I would have had no problem if the paragraph above read 'it is your
moral obligation to share your wealth with ones less fortunate' BTW.
Or, even 'we are stuck with this government, and for _pragmatic_
reasons disobedience when it comes to taxation is not a good idea.'
But, as stated, it frames an accident of birth (citizenship) as a
choice, brings morality into a picture it doesn't belong, and defines
fairness in terms of collective decisions based on headcount. I fear
taxation wouldn't be the only evil coming out of such a basis for
public discourse for government action. I suspect the folks here who
talk about wars of the 20th century on a thread that is nominally
about economics probably have a point roughly based on this notion of
patriotism, fairness, and morality.
cheers,
BM
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Sat, 07 May 2005:
> The thing people who cry for less state and more capitalism don't realise
> is that capitalism requires a state to make it work.
Yes, we all know that capitalism is different from anarchy. You need
property rights, enforcement of contracts, dispute resolution, a medium
of exchange (money), etc. Lots of state structure is needed to make
efficient, functioning capitalist markets.
> I challenge you to find me one single person who has gotten decidedly rich
> by efforts of labour alone.
It probably matters what you think "rich" means, and what you think "labor
alone" means.
A guy in the US, who goes to college, and becomes a low-level career
programmer at a place like IBM or Yahoo or SAP or Microsoft ... even just
counting wages (and not stock ownership), such an employee would easily
be viewed as rich by any historical standard, or even current 3rd-world
standard.
Now, they happen to be surrounded by people a whole lot richer than them.
But that gets back to the problem of relative vs. absolute evaluation of
whether you are rich, and begs the original question of whether it matters
that somebody else is a whole lot richer if you yourself have a lot anyway.
> The very problem with capitalism is that it makes it impossible to get
> wealthy only by working. No matter how hard those Asian Americans work,
> they're not going to get rich unless they play the interest or rent game.
Again, it depends what you mean by the "interest" or "rent" game. But surely
you can trade your working hours for ownership in some capitalist enterprise.
Why must anyone be limited to "only working"? That's the whole point of
saving for the future. Put aside some of your current wages, and invest in
a 401(k) or other stock market retirement account.
Suddenly, every citizen becomes and owner as well as a laborer. And everybody
can get rich (by most historical metrics).
> But what needs more consideration is HOW people get rich under the current,
> totally broken system and recognise why it's flawed and what needs to
> change to fix it.
You haven't given any evidence that the current system is broken.
And your proposals about a better one have so far been much, much worse.
> Crash course on economics without all the rationalism crap.
From you?! Exciting! Can't wait.
> In reality there is only one source of wealth: the application of labour
> to natural resources
No, that is not the only source of wealth. And nothing is gained by
pretending that it is.
> Obviously, if labour is the source of wealth, labour is where the
> rewards of wealth ought to go.
Also, this conclusion is far from obvious.
If you look at two parties negotiate a contract, the relative distribution
of rewards comes down to which party's contributions are more easily
replaceable. This is true for any contract, on any subject.
Even if labor was "the source" of wealth (whatever that is supposed to mean),
it's reasonable to suppose that has almost nothing to do with where the
rewards should be allocated. They instead should be allocated to whatever
component deserves the most credit for the outcome.
> But that's not what happens in capitalism. In capitalism, capitalists by
> "owning" capital investment, insist that in order for labour to have
> access to the capital necessary for production (capital which
> originated through efforts of labour to begin with) labour surrender some
> of its wealth to the capitalist in order to pay interest to the
> capitalist.
OK, sure.
> Note that the idea of owning is not in and of itself a way of producing
> wealth. Without labour the capital and land would just sit there.
But without capital the labor would be one millionth as productive as it
could otherwise be. If you have a choice of working alone, but then someone
offers you a tool that will let you produce outputs a million times more
efficiently, how much would you pay to borrow that tool?
> Moreover without this idea of property capital would already be in the
> hands of labour who produced it to begin with.
Without property rights the capital probably wouldn't exist in the first place.
Moreover: what stops a laborer from using his own labor effort to simply
create more capital? Why do you artificially separate them, and assume that
a capital-owner never works labor hours, while a labor worker never owns any
capital property?
In a strong capitalist economy like the US, most citizens are members of
both groups. The groups are no necessarily in opposition.
> Land is free for the taking except where the idea of property puts
> artificial barriers up to its use.
Land has _never_ been free for the taking. Humans have defended their land
violently since before prehistory.
> Property is only possible through state force. Alternatively, without a
> state, capitalists and land owners need to have their own forces to
> dish out any violence required to protect their property interests.
Hey! We agree on something!
> Capitalism without a state is just corporations with their own military.
> Essentially the idea of a state would simply switch from being borders
> of controlled land to being borders of controlled capital.
You're probably right.
> Lets consider some of the problems with capitalism and see what effect
> property has on them:
> 1. Wealth inequality.
You haven't yet described a problem.
> Like I said, you can't get rich through labour.
> There's only so many hours in a day someone can work.
That may or may not be true. But you're probably right that you can make
more wealth via ownership, than you can by selling your hours. So, the
solution is that everyone should own something. Simple.
> The way to get rich in capitalism is to make money without working. So, by
> accumulating property in capitalism people are able to accumulate more and
> more wealth without ever having to lift a finger, the upper bounds being
> limitless.
Whoever said without lifting a finger? What makes you think that acquiring
capital property takes no effort? It requires labor hours to do that too.
> Not everyone can be a capitalist or land-owner
At last we come to the root of your problem.
So I ask you simply: why not?
Isn't a simple solution to your problem, to indeed have everybody be a
capitalist? (Land is finite, and it's all owned today, but capital property
can be created -- via labor hours, in fact -- so there is no artificial
limit there.)
> 2. State violence. Property's gotta be enforced somehow. Look at the US'
> huge defence budget and all the wars it wages. The US has one of the
> bloodiest histories out there as well as one of the most obsessed
> capitalist mentalities. Not a coincidence.
You're a fool to think that these are connected. All capitalism has provided
is wealth, and of course with wealth comes the ability to conduct war.
But there have been thousands of societies in history, most all of them
very bloody. The US has been one of the least warlike nations, given its
relative military and economic strength. This probably has nothing to do with
capitalism, but is more likely a consequence of democracy.
But you really want to compare the US violent tendencies with historical
norms? Nazi Germany? Soviet Russia? Napoleon? Alexander the Great?
Genghis Khan? All the European empires in Africa and the Americas in the
1500's?
Contrast that with US actions towards Germany and Japan after WWII.
Yes, the US has done many military actions that many people can disapprove of.
But your attempt to suggest that capitalism _causes_ the "bloodiest history"
is laughable.
> Look at the cold war against state communism - I mean really, why should
> the US care about other countries becoming state communist? State communism
> is a threat to US ideals of property of course.
Exactly. State communism is (typically) not willing to adopt a "live and
let live" attitude. Instead, it forces an us-vs-them approach. If you don't
defend liberty, you lose it.
That's not a problem if you support communism. (As you do? It remains hard
to tell.) But if you prefer capitalism, it is indeed a problem.
> 3. Environmental externalities. This is what you get when a corporation is
> given exclusive rights to a natural resource. With property enforcement
> they're free to do what they like with the natural resource.
No, that's not an externality.
An externality is when they use some _other_ resource, that they don't pay
for.
> In the capitalists' interest that involves milking it for all the profit
> they can get. Who cares what the results are? It's not like the capitalist
> would ever choose to live there or anything.
You confuse capitalism, and the profit motive, with evil. It appears that
you can't even imagine the possible world where the pursuit of profit is not
an immoral act.
You ought to broaden your horizons a bit, and at least try to understand what
the other side is saying.
> 4. Unemployment. Really, why need there be anyone unemployed?
Because you need a supply of ready labor available for new projects.
If there was zero unemployment, then new startups and new internal projects
would never get off the ground, because nobody would be available to work
on them since everyone is already committed to a job.
So it turns out that things work smoother for everyone if there is a little
bit of unemployment, but not much. The so-called "natural rate" of
unemployment.
> I was merely describing why people might adopt my ideas without need of
> force.
You think they'll just like your ideas, and choose to voluntarily adopt them.
But your ideas are fragile. Someone might like them in 90% of the cases,
but then there's some topic where they really, really want to do something
different, and the rules of your society don't allow it.
If you prevent them from breaking outside your rules by force, then you
become a totalitarian state.
If you permit it, then you'll find in every single issue there is always
one guy who is willing to supply or purchase at the free market rate, and
that pressure will cause your "ideal" markets to collapse.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
Master: Who disturbs our meditation, as a pebble disturbs the stillness of a
pond? Student: Me. Ed Gruberman. -- "Boot to the Head", The Frantics
Don Geddis wrote:
> Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Sat, 07 May 2005:
> > Look at the cold war against state communism - I mean really, why
> > should the US care about other countries becoming state
> > communist? State communism is a threat to US ideals of property
> > of course.
>
> Exactly. State communism is (typically) not willing to adopt a
> "live and let live" attitude. Instead, it forces an us-vs-them
> approach. If you don't defend liberty, you lose it.
America's "architect of the Cold War" publicly ridiculed the notion
that the US won the cold war. In fact, he pointed out we were the
extreme aggressors.
http://www.pentaside.org/article/kennan-nyt-gop-won-coldwar.html
Let me emphasize his credentials:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan
That said, you bring up a couple points that may be interesting to hear
the counterresponses to. Or perhaps better yet, people like Robert
might recommend sources to learn from on our own. I am personally very
open to "unusual" but good sources, such as the anarchist Wizards of
Money series, etc. (Doesn't necessarily have to be about postcapitalist
visions; serious discussions of current economic structures would also
be appreciated.)
Good economics sources are exceedingly hard to find, just as reasonable
compsci books are crowded out of bookstores and libraries.
Don Geddis wrote:
>>2. State violence. Property's gotta be enforced somehow. Look at the US'
>>huge defence budget and all the wars it wages. The US has one of the
>>bloodiest histories out there as well as one of the most obsessed
>>capitalist mentalities. Not a coincidence.
>
>
> You're a fool to think that these are connected. All capitalism has provided
> is wealth, and of course with wealth comes the ability to conduct war.
>
> But there have been thousands of societies in history, most all of them
> very bloody. The US has been one of the least warlike nations, given its
> relative military and economic strength. This probably has nothing to do with
> capitalism, but is more likely a consequence of democracy.
>
> But you really want to compare the US violent tendencies with historical
> norms? Nazi Germany? Soviet Russia? Napoleon? Alexander the Great?
> Genghis Khan? All the European empires in Africa and the Americas in the
> 1500's?
>
> Contrast that with US actions towards Germany and Japan after WWII.
>
> Yes, the US has done many military actions that many people can disapprove of.
> But your attempt to suggest that capitalism _causes_ the "bloodiest history"
> is laughable.
Let me add that it's mostly the government, that is, a few people,
that wage war. I'm not sure how many Americans would have
invaded Iraq on their own.
A privately funded army wouldn't like be sent to war by its
funding citizens, because they would have no interest in attacking
anyone, and because war is freaking expensive!
The government can get away with it, because it distracts people
with other laws (Bush's newest welfare thing?), because one
government unifies power over all issues in one institution.
People don't really *see* how much taxes they pay for the war.
A less centralized Capitalism would be much more peaceful, as
people generally only try to defend their contracts and property.
Compare that with US police that incarcerates anyone who smokes
a joint (or something in that direction).
One comment to Mr Gabbour's comment about not winning the Cold
War. I don't really know how the US and the USSR were at the
time, but indeed, even without aggressive military expansion over
time Communism might have collapsed on its own (like it did in the
end). It's hard to speculate about different outcomes. A freely
funded US army might have expanded less and focused mainly of
defense, like anti-nuclear missiles and stuff like that.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
On Fri, 06 May 2005 22:59:52 -0700, Don Geddis wrote:
> Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Sat, 07 May 2005:
>> The thing people who cry for less state and more capitalism don't
>> realise is that capitalism requires a state to make it work.
>
> Yes, we all know that capitalism is different from anarchy. You need
> property rights, enforcement of contracts, dispute resolution, a medium of
> exchange (money), etc. Lots of state structure is needed to make
> efficient, functioning capitalist markets.
You might know it, but the person I was replying to clearly does not.
>> I challenge you to find me one single person who has gotten decidedly
>> rich by efforts of labour alone.
>
> It probably matters what you think "rich" means, and what you think "labor
> alone" means.
>
> A guy in the US, who goes to college, and becomes a low-level career
> programmer at a place like IBM or Yahoo or SAP or Microsoft ... even just
> counting wages (and not stock ownership), such an employee would easily be
> viewed as rich by any historical standard, or even current 3rd-world
> standard.
>
> Now, they happen to be surrounded by people a whole lot richer than them.
> But that gets back to the problem of relative vs. absolute evaluation of
> whether you are rich, and begs the original question of whether it matters
> that somebody else is a whole lot richer if you yourself have a lot
> anyway.
I badly specified this challenge. I was thinking in the context of people
working but not having ownership of their product where most of the
value created by labour is taken and passed up to the owners of the
capital that was used in production. Paul Graham offered by Ron was a good
example.
>> The very problem with capitalism is that it makes it impossible to get
>> wealthy only by working. No matter how hard those Asian Americans work,
>> they're not going to get rich unless they play the interest or rent
>> game.
Let me rephrase this now that I'm aware of what I was missing:
"The very problem with capitalism is that it makes it impossible to get
wealthy only by working <without having ownership of the product>. No
matter how hard those Asian Americans work, they're not going to get rich
unless they play the interest or rent game <or to pull off a Paul
Graham by managing to own the full product of their labour>"
Indeed the system I propose fixes this flaw of capitalism by ensuring
labour always fully owns and controls the product of what they produce.
> Again, it depends what you mean by the "interest" or "rent" game. But
> surely you can trade your working hours for ownership in some capitalist
> enterprise. Why must anyone be limited to "only working"? That's the
> whole point of saving for the future. Put aside some of your current
> wages, and invest in a 401(k) or other stock market retirement account.
Yeah, it's the easiest way to get rich in he current system - rent or
interest.
My point is that neither ownership of land nor ownership of capital adds
value to anything. Land is freely given to us by nature, capital is the
product of labour. With labour as the source of all value, obtaining
wealth by any other means is necessarily taking it away from those who
actually do the labour to create the wealth. This is taxing/stealing
from the worker.
> Suddenly, every citizen becomes and owner as well as a laborer. And
> everybody can get rich (by most historical metrics).
That's a magical fairy world which denies reality. In reality there are
many people who do not have or barely have enough wealth to survive let
alone sacrifice any for investment. And these poorer people are the very
result of stealing from workers - people with extremely low income jobs
and people without jobs because property ownership denies these people
access to the means of production.
> You haven't given any evidence that the current system is broken. And your
> proposals about a better one have so far been much, much worse.
Please, leave the rhetoric aside. Your opinion is not true simply because
you believe it. You've yet to prove my proposals are worse.
>> In reality there is only one source of wealth: the application of labour
>> to natural resources
>
> No, that is not the only source of wealth. And nothing is gained by
> pretending that it is.
Really? Then point out another way that value is added to society.
>> Obviously, if labour is the source of wealth, labour is where the
>> rewards of wealth ought to go.
>
> Also, this conclusion is far from obvious.
>
> If you look at two parties negotiate a contract, the relative distribution
> of rewards comes down to which party's contributions are more easily
> replaceable. This is true for any contract, on any subject.
>
> Even if labor was "the source" of wealth (whatever that is supposed to
> mean), it's reasonable to suppose that has almost nothing to do with where
> the rewards should be allocated. They instead should be allocated to
> whatever component deserves the most credit for the outcome.
Let's take a simplified example. 99 hands go into the creation of a
product, and 1 person oversees and coordinates the production. They all
put an identical amount of effort into that production and are of
identical skill.
In my view this means the value of 100 people's labour has been combined
to produce the product. Each one has put in identical effort with their
identical skill levels and is consequently entitled to identical rewards.
This would be a true reaching of your goal of the wealth being "allocated
to whatever component deserves the most credit for the outcome" since they
are equally to be credited for having an equal hand in the production.
You on the other hand arbitrarily claim the 1 person overseeing and
coordinating the production should receive more income simply because
their position is more rare and difficult to replace (assuming similar
proportions of manual labourers and supervisors throughout society). Yet
in the next paragraph you contradict this by saying the wealth should be
allocated according to credit.
Bring in a capitalist and the system gets worse. In capitalism, because
those 100 people need access to capital to do any production, the
capitalist holds the capital at ransom and demands that the workers hand
the full value of their labour over to the capitalist. The capitalist then
proceeds to take a part of that value, (usually) pays the workers the
minimum wage s/he can without losing the worker to the labour market (plus
a bit more if the capitalist wants to give additional incentive) and keeps
the remainder for him/herself, gaining more capital with which to command
more labour. Without offering anything other than state-enforced property
ownership over the capital which labour produced to begin with, the
capitalist has successfully taken full power over production and claimed
the entirity for him/herself to do as s/he pleases. This example shows how
from property ownership we get the capitalist problems of exploitation of
labour and unequal distribution of wealth and power.
>> Note that the idea of owning is not in and of itself a way of producing
>> wealth. Without labour the capital and land would just sit there.
>
> But without capital the labor would be one millionth as productive as it
> could otherwise be. If you have a choice of working alone, but then
> someone offers you a tool that will let you produce outputs a million
> times more efficiently, how much would you pay to borrow that tool?
The problem is that that tool originally came about through labour. In
capitalism labour produces a tool, the capitalist keeps it by virtue of
"owning" the capital the labour used to produce it and then offers it back
to labour again on the condition that all production be surrendered to the
capitalist. It then continues in a vicious circle with the capitalist
appropriating more and more wealth from labour.
>> Moreover without this idea of property capital would already be in the
>> hands of labour who produced it to begin with.
>
> Without property rights the capital probably wouldn't exist in the first
> place.
What makes you think you need any idea of property in order for people to
produce capital? Look at free software. The whole concept works
through people creating software (a type of capital) without enforcing
property rights. It could be said that GPL is a way of ensuring that
capitalists don't steal the capital from the programmers and ensures
programmers continue to have access to the capital they originally
produced (including the programmers who are hired by the capitalist to
write the software. Were it not for the GPL the capitalist would usually
keep all rights to the software the programmer wrote and the programmer
would be unable to access the product of his/her labour outside of working
for the capitalist).
> Moreover: what stops a laborer from using his own labor effort to simply
> create more capital? Why do you artificially separate them, and assume
> that a capital-owner never works labor hours, while a labor worker never
> owns any capital property?
I don't artificially separate them. Labourers can own capital and
capitalists can do labour. I'm talking about the dynamics at work. People
can cross the boundaries of those dynamics but the dynamics themselves
remain distinct. In fact labourers having full ownership of the capital
they produce is the ideal my system shoots for.
> In a strong capitalist economy like the US, most citizens are members of
> both groups. The groups are no necessarily in opposition.
Just because individuals can play on both teams doesn't mean the teams
aren't opposed.
>> Land is free for the taking except where the idea of property puts
>> artificial barriers up to its use.
>
> Land has _never_ been free for the taking. Humans have defended their
> land violently since before prehistory.
What evidence have you for that? That kind of violent defence is only as
old as feudalism. You might get a bit of territorialism before that but
not generally so exclusive.
If a bunch of thirsty people in the desert find an oasis and the first one
who gets there claims it saying "this is now my property" should he be
able to demand any form of payment from the others for its use simply
because he was there first? And what meaning would his property have
unless he can defend it violently? If he succeeds in defending it and
extracting payment clearly it's exploitation. He's set up artificial
barriers to an otherwise publically accessible land resource and is
using it to swindle wealth (necessarily generated by their labour) out of
the others.
>> Lets consider some of the problems with capitalism and see what effect
>> property has on them:
>> 1. Wealth inequality.
>
> You haven't yet described a problem.
Wealth inequality is the situation whereby some people have become
excessively wealthy while others become excessively poor. While the poor
have less than they need, the wealthy have more than they can use.
>> Like I said, you can't get rich through labour. There's only so many
>> hours in a day someone can work.
>
> That may or may not be true. But you're probably right that you can
> make more wealth via ownership, than you can by selling your hours. So,
> the solution is that everyone should own something. Simple.
As I said, in capitalism there are people who have less than they need.
Having less than they need by definition means not having enough spare
wealth to invest into ownership. "The American dream" is only accessible
to those who have more wealth than their basic needs require.
>> The way to get rich in capitalism is to make money without working. So,
>> by accumulating property in capitalism people are able to accumulate
>> more and more wealth without ever having to lift a finger, the upper
>> bounds being limitless.
>
> Whoever said without lifting a finger? What makes you think that
> acquiring capital property takes no effort? It requires labor hours to
> do that too.
Not necessarily. One can simply hire a stock broker and get them to look
after all the investments. Or they can own a company and hire a CEO to
look after it. A capitalist need not even know where the wealth is coming
from let alone have any hand in generating it.
>> Not everyone can be a capitalist or land-owner
>
> At last we come to the root of your problem.
>
> So I ask you simply: why not?
Mentioned above. Unequal distribution of wealth prohibits some from that
possiblity.
> Isn't a simple solution to your problem, to indeed have everybody be a
> capitalist? (Land is finite, and it's all owned today, but capital
> property can be created -- via labor hours, in fact -- so there is no
> artificial limit there.)
In a way. If everyone owned capital proportional to the labour they did
then it'd be similar to the system I'm suggesting. Though it'd be a bit
skewed since everyone would be the boss of someone else and the servant of
another. In my system everyone owns their own capital so power hierarchies
need not exist at all even in such a circular form.
>> 2. State violence. Property's gotta be enforced somehow. Look at the
>> US' huge defence budget and all the wars it wages. The US has one of
>> the bloodiest histories out there as well as one of the most obsessed
>> capitalist mentalities. Not a coincidence.
>
> You're a fool to think that these are connected. All capitalism has
> provided is wealth, and of course with wealth comes the ability to
> conduct war.
>
> But there have been thousands of societies in history, most all of them
> very bloody. The US has been one of the least warlike nations, given
> its relative military and economic strength. This probably has nothing
> to do with capitalism, but is more likely a consequence of democracy.
>
> But you really want to compare the US violent tendencies with historical
> norms? Nazi Germany? Soviet Russia? Napoleon? Alexander the Great?
> Genghis Khan? All the European empires in Africa and the Americas in
> the 1500's?
What were those other wars fought for mostly? Land ownership. The only
difference between them and the capitalist-centric wars of the US is that
the US tends to fight wars for capital rather than land. Like oil fields
in Iraq.
>> Look at the cold war against state communism - I mean really, why
>> should the US care about other countries becoming state communist?
>> State communism is a threat to US ideals of property of course.
>
> Exactly. State communism is (typically) not willing to adopt a "live
> and let live" attitude. Instead, it forces an us-vs-them approach. If
> you don't defend liberty, you lose it.
Not necessarily. As another poster has pointed out, a good argument can be
made for the US being the aggressor in the cold war. Also, even if
state communism were being the aggressors, they'd also be doing it for
property.
Without exception war is the one of the attrotious worst results of
property - where property is held in higher regard than human life itself.
>> 3. Environmental externalities. This is what you get when a corporation
>> is given exclusive rights to a natural resource. With property
>> enforcement they're free to do what they like with the natural
>> resource.
>
> No, that's not an externality.
>
> An externality is when they use some _other_ resource, that they don't
> pay for.
My description does unintentionally give a misleading idea of what an
externality is. Thanks for clarifying.
My point however is that property has historically been the defence for
continuing to cause externalities with claims that only legal actions are
being performed on legally owned land (though those actions are having
effects outside of the land in the form of externalities). If the land
were owned in common I imagine more people would exercise their say in how
that land was used.
>> 4. Unemployment. Really, why need there be anyone unemployed?
>
> Because you need a supply of ready labor available for new projects. If
> there was zero unemployment, then new startups and new internal projects
> would never get off the ground, because nobody would be available to
> work on them since everyone is already committed to a job.
Not true. Conventionally frictional unemployment (that of being in a
transitive state between jobs) is not counted in the generic term
"unemployment". Generic unemployment refers to those who are attempting to
get a job but are unable. That is a phenomenon unique to capitalism. It's
not seen in feudalism, communism or even primitive societies.
Sorry to say that, but you don't seem to have a real understanding
of basic economic issues.
I won't respond to this lengthy article, because explaining the
mechanics of markets, and how they work, gets labeled by Mr Buelow
as "rant", and it's all off-topic anyway.
I'm a capitalist, and you're more on the socialist side, which is
fine. But, please, read something about economics, and think of
human nature all the time. Think of *why* people do things, not
of how beautiful sunshine there might be on the world. ;)
Have a good day.
In article <······························@bobturf.org>,
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote:
> I challenge you to find me one single person who has gotten decidedly rich
> by efforts of labour alone.
Bill Gates? Larry and Sergey? Paul Graham?
rg
On Fri, 06 May 2005 23:08:55 -0700, Ron Garret wrote:
> In article <······························@bobturf.org>,
> Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote:
>
>> I challenge you to find me one single person who has gotten decidedly
>> rich by efforts of labour alone.
>
> Bill Gates? Larry and Sergey? Paul Graham?
Bill Gates definitely not. He owns a company for which thousands of people
work and for which he reaps much of his rewards off the efforts of those
employees.
I don't know much about Larry and Sergey story
Paul Graham... wellll he didn't really do $1M of labour - if you took a
typical labourer he'd have to work a helluva lot more to earn $1M than
Paul Graham did. But that's based on principles we don't necessarily agree
with and I didn't ask we agree on them when I posted my challenge so I
won't move the goal posts. So I'll pay that - Paul Graham's a good
example.
Incidentally, my understanding of how Viaweb was constructed looks a lot
like a collective - no boss, everyone just cooperating. I don't know how
they distributed their wages but if it was pretty equal then they were
basically a collective. I advocate collectives as an ethical,
non-exploitative alternative to living in the current system and I'm
rather pleased to see one do so well.
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Sun, 08 May 2005:
> Paul Graham... wellll he didn't really do $1M of labour - if you took a
> typical labourer he'd have to work a helluva lot more to earn $1M than
> Paul Graham did.
> Incidentally, my understanding of how Viaweb was constructed looks a lot
> like a collective - no boss, everyone just cooperating. I don't know how
> they distributed their wages but if it was pretty equal then they were
> basically a collective.
Most small startups make a lot (but not all) of decisions by consensus.
But you grossly misunderstand their compensation. It actually doesn't matter
what their wages were, and whether they were similar or different. Everyone
in Viaweb worked for a few years, and by the end of the adventure by far the
greatest component of their compensation was due to their relative ownership
in the company. The big rewards came from Yahoo purchasing their stock, so
what mattered was how much stock they each owned. Not what their wages were.
> I advocate collectives as an ethical, non-exploitative alternative to
> living in the current system and I'm rather pleased to see one do so well.
Viaweb is not an example for you. It was a perfectly normal, even typical,
capitalist corporation. (With a better financial outcome than most.)
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that
we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We
address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk
to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. -- Adam Smith
Robert Marlow wrote:
> On Fri, 06 May 2005 23:08:55 -0700, Ron Garret wrote:
>
> > In article <······························@bobturf.org>,
> > Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote:
> >
> >> I challenge you to find me one single person who has gotten
decidedly
> >> rich by efforts of labour alone.
> >
> > Bill Gates? Larry and Sergey? Paul Graham?
>
>
> Bill Gates definitely not. He owns a company for which thousands of
people
> work and for which he reaps much of his rewards off the efforts of
those
> employees.
He does now. But he didn't when he began. He got rich because he
worked hard and hustled. (N.B. I am no fan of Bill Gates. But it's
not fair to say that the "capitalist system" handed Microsoft to him on
a silver platter. He (and many other people who also got rich) worked
hard to create it.)
> I don't know much about Larry and Sergey story
Pretty much the same thing: they created the original Google software
with their own hands (and brains), persuaded other people to work for
them and invest in them by the strength of their product and their
management skills, and if you don't know the rest of the story you
should come out from under your rock.
> Paul Graham... wellll he didn't really do $1M of labour -
Says who?
> if you took a
> typical labourer he'd have to work a helluva lot more to earn $1M
than
> Paul Graham did.
Ah, there's the problem: you seem to be distinguishing people who got
rich off *labor* from people who got rich off of *wages*. These two
are not the same thing.
How about Wolfgang Puck? Arnold Schwartzenegger? George Lucas? J.K.
Rowling?
rg
···@flownet.com wrote:
>
>
> He does now. But he didn't when he began. He got rich because he
> worked hard and hustled. (N.B. I am no fan of Bill Gates. But it's
> not fair to say that the "capitalist system" handed Microsoft to him on
> a silver platter. He (and many other people who also got rich) worked
> hard to create it.)
>
>
Bill Gates in particular had a mother who had been a business partner
of the some board members of IBM. Lots of luck, very little hard work.
>>>>> "RM" == Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> writes:
[...]
RM> I'm curious to know what examples you're thinking of where my
RM> ideas have been tried and failed miserably. I'm guessing
RM> you're jumping to the conclusion without reading properly that
RM> I'm some kind of state communist and thinking along the lines
RM> of USSR or PRC. If so, you're way off and you need to read a
RM> bit more carefully before you fire off overly emotional rants
RM> in such a religious manner.
I can't speak for Russell McManus, but what I don't get is:
(1) what's getting in the way of people doing what you suggest
voluntarily?
(2) if there isn't enough volunteers, then how, w/o exercising coercion,
you intend to get what you want to happen to happen (and keep it
happening)?
I _suspect_ people get provoked into what you call rants because they
sense there's use of force there somewhere and continuous -- albeit
democratically driven -- coercion later.
RM> Hmm, I think I bit into that bait a bit harder than necessary.
We are all doing it seeing how this is comp.lang.lisp.
cheers,
BM
Bulent Murtezaoglu wrote:
> I _suspect_ people get provoked into what you call rants because
> they sense there's use of force there somewhere and continuous --
> albeit democratically driven -- coercion later.
Then let's pretend we're scientists and ask how much coercion happens
in the status quo. Let's take my nation, America, as a case study.
DOMESTIC: Leads the world in imprisonment, both in rate and absolute
numbers. Assuming communist China is underreporting by about half, they
are on par in absolute numbers, though of course China has 4 times
America's total population.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r234.pdf
Prisoners are disproportionately minority (black, etc). As a subjective
guess, this seems highly unlikely to be comp.lang.lisp's demographic.
INTERNATIONAL: Often spends as about as much on military as rest of
world combined. Polls seem to indicate that US is perceived as coercive
and dominating.
Now, I didn't cite all the evidence, but it's all available on the net
for people to look up if they're inclined. Also, there are certainly
good areas; for example, since the 1970s, America had possibly the best
legal free speech protections in the world.
Taking off the lab coat, I think people are actually excited to tag
concerned citizens as "commies". Bill Gates does this with IBM for
supporting Free Software, and it is not surprising many in the Lisp
community join him, noting that Lisp bathed in Cold War era DARPA
subsidies, from McCarthy to Sussman.
(Ironically, despite those subsidies, most of the Lisp world failed to
survive real-world markets once the government teat was withdrawn.
Richard Gabriel claimed it wasn't Lisp's fault, but rather those old
Lisp academics made astonishingly incompetent businessmen. Perhaps they
did not understand capitalism.)
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Now, I didn't cite all the evidence, but it's all available on the net
> for people to look up if they're inclined. Also, there are certainly
> good areas; for example, since the 1970s, America had possibly the best
> legal free speech protections in the world.
I don't know about the legal stuff, but this:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=11715
doesn't look too good for the USA (well, for my high expectations
as regards freedom).
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
>>>>> "TJG" == Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
[...]
TJG> Then let's pretend we're scientists and ask how much coercion
TJG> happens in the status quo. Let's take my nation, America, as
TJG> a case study.
I'll play.
TJG> DOMESTIC: Leads the world in imprisonment, both in rate and
TJG> absolute numbers. [... China comparison deleted]
You are aware that these have to do with the drug laws, correct? Do you
genuinely believe folks inclining towards the classical liberal position
are supportive of such laws?
[...]
TJG> Prisoners are disproportionately minority (black, etc). As a
TJG> subjective guess, this seems highly unlikely to be
TJG> comp.lang.lisp's demographic.
Lispers from the US, perhaps. We don't quite know what color rest
are. But don't understand the relevance of this observation about the
folks here (even if it is plausible). (The implication I can sense is
not altogether palatable, to be honest).
TJG> INTERNATIONAL: Often spends as about as much on military as
TJG> rest of world combined. Polls seem to indicate that US is
TJG> perceived as coercive and dominating.
Given the tax base (and the people who effectively guarantee the debt),
this should not be surprising. It is my understanding that, right now,
this is a very divisive issue over there, so perhaps we ought not
stray and go R2OT in flames?
TJG> Also, there are certainly good areas; for example, since the 1970s,
TJG> 1970s America had possibly the best legal free speech protections
TJG> in the world.
Quite possibly it still does (DMCA etc. excepted).
TJG> Taking off the lab coat, I think people are actually excited
TJG> to tag concerned citizens as "commies". [...]
No. This is not so. I have not seen this happen here. People who made
the accusation had stories/justifications I could understand at least.
Which of the regulars did you have in mind?
cheers,
BM
Bulent Murtezaoglu wrote:
>>> I _suspect_ people get provoked into what you call rants because
>>> they sense there's use of force there somewhere and continuous --
>>> albeit democratically driven -- coercion later.
>
> >>>>> "TJG" == Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> TJG> Then let's pretend we're scientists and ask how much
> TJG> coercion happens in the status quo. Let's take my nation,
> TJG> America, as a case study.
>
> I'll play.
>
> TJG> DOMESTIC: Leads the world in imprisonment, both in rate and
> TJG> absolute numbers. [... China comparison deleted]
>
> You are aware that these have to do with the drug laws, correct? Do
> you genuinely believe folks inclining towards the classical liberal
> position are supportive of such laws?
Any halfway honest scientist would pause to ask, "Well, what's the
coercion level in the status quo?" upon considering this topic.
With lab coats on, we first observe that reality is already very
coercive, before attacking the Big Question: Why.
But when I take the lab coat off -- my congressperson definitely has to
know our prison state strays from the "classical liberal position." Von
Humboldt is surely spinning in his grave!, I'll exclaim.
> TJG> Prisoners are disproportionately minority (black, etc). As
> TJG> a subjective guess, this seems highly unlikely to be
> TJG> comp.lang.lisp's demographic.
>
> Lispers from the US, perhaps. We don't quite know what color rest
> are. But don't understand the relevance of this observation about
> the folks here (even if it is plausible). (The implication I can
> sense is not altogether palatable, to be honest).
Is science palatable?! Might it lead to GRUESOME observations like
participants in this conversation mainly benefit rather than suffer
from the status quo? Tune in at 10 for the Shock Jock of Science!
Thought experiment: think of a coercive country where some lead
pleasurable lives. Name it in your mind. Won't its advantaged people be
paranoid about some new system, rather than the old where they're
insulated from the bad stuff? Wouldn't you be?
> TJG> INTERNATIONAL: Often spends as about as much on military as
> TJG> rest of world combined. Polls seem to indicate that US is
> TJG> perceived as coercive and dominating.
>
> Given the tax base (and the people who effectively guarantee the
> debt), this should not be surprising.
Could you explain this unsurprising fact to me, either here or in
private email? I'm always willin' to learn.
> It is my understanding that, right now,
> this is a very divisive issue over there, so perhaps we ought not
> stray and go R2OT in flames?
Run, girlie man. ;)
Seriously, do we see why rational discussions rarely take place? I
pointed out a few unquestionable facts: prison numbers, military
spending and international perception of coercion. But they suffer from
the enormous problem of unpleasantness.
I do not know how to avoid unpleasantries when seriously discussing
fundamentally unpleasant things like coercion.
> TJG> Taking off the lab coat, I think people are actually
> TJG> excited to tag concerned citizens as "commies". [...]
>
> No. This is not so. I have not seen this happen here. People who
> made the accusation had stories/justifications I could understand
> at least. Which of the regulars did you have in mind?
Oh, it's those guys you think are justified. ;) Who claim democracy =
state communism. Really, I used to speak with guys who'd "prove" that
XML is better than sexps and therefore Java is better. I'm sure most
programmers actually find that perfectly reasonable and understandable.
>>>>> "TJG" == Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
[...]
>> Lispers from the US, perhaps. We don't quite know what color
>> rest are. But don't understand the relevance of this
>> observation about the folks here (even if it is plausible).
>> (The implication I can sense is not altogether palatable, to be
>> honest).
TJG> Is science palatable?! Might it lead to GRUESOME observations
TJG> like participants in this conversation mainly benefit rather
TJG> than suffer from the status quo? Tune in at 10 for the Shock
TJG> Jock of Science!
Oh what I find unpalatable is the implication that lispers here are
intellectually corrupt. As for them benefitting from the status quo,
it isn't altogether clear that they are. I don't see how I benefit
from black guys getting locked up for drug dealing in the US, for
example (especially since I don't even live there). If by the status
quo you mean the ability to own property and freely enter into contracts,
I suppose you might have a point. I don't quite see how _elimination_
of such abilities would help anyone -- not because it would hurt me but
because I believe the use the said rights was essential to my
_avoiding_ poverty even when I had no pre-accumulated property. (had
I been less lucky would I sing different tune? dunno. The fact is
_you_ don't know that either.) These are issues where reasonable
people of integrity might differ, there is no compelling reason to see
this as intellectually corrupt people arguing for their interests.
(Not that I am offended or angry at you, but is my characterization of
what you imply an unfair one?)
[...]
TJG> Seriously, do we see why rational discussions rarely take
TJG> place? I pointed out a few unquestionable facts: prison
TJG> numbers, military spending and international perception of
TJG> coercion. But they suffer from the enormous problem of
TJG> unpleasantness.
And you got unpleasant irrationality in exchange? If so, I don't see
it. I'll own up to my own stupidity if any but I haven't seen much
unpleasantness.
[...]
TJG> Taking off the lab coat, I think people are actually excited
TJG> to tag concerned citizens as "commies". [...]
>> No. This is not so. I have not seen this happen here. People
>> who made the accusation had stories/justifications I could
>> understand at least. Which of the regulars did you have in
>> mind?
TJG> Oh, it's those guys you think are justified. ;) Who claim
TJG> democracy = state communism.
Oh all I am saying is that I can _understand_ those arguments. It is
also clear that they have a very easy job as what's being presented is
underspecified. If someone came out and said: 'we don't recognize
private ownership or property, we believe in sanctity of headcounts,
private contacts between individuals cannot be allowed, we will
justify coercion for this' I'd say I understand that also.
cheers,
BM
Bulent Murtezaoglu wrote:
> >>>>> "TJG" == Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> TJG> Is science palatable?! Might it lead to GRUESOME
> TJG> observations like participants in this conversation mainly
> TJG> benefit rather than suffer from the status quo? Tune in
> TJG> at 10 for the Shock Jock of Science!
> TJG>
> TJG> Thought experiment: think of a coercive country where some
> TJG> lead pleasurable lives. Name it in your mind. Won't its
> TJG> advantaged people be paranoid about some new system,
> TJG> rather than the old where they're insulated from the bad
> TJG> stuff? Wouldn't you be?
>
> Oh what I find unpalatable is the implication that lispers here are
> intellectually corrupt.
You think I said they were "corrupt"? If you rarely perceive the
downsides of a system, it is almost a truism that you won't be
particularly aware how bad things are.
Mark Twain talked about his slaves, in his autobiography:
"As I have said, we lived in a slaveholding community; indeed, when
slavery perished my mother had been in daily touch with it for sixty
years. Yet, kind-hearted and compassionate as she was, I think she was
not conscious that slavery was a bald, grotesque, and unwarrantable
usurpation. She had never heard it assailed in any pulpit, but had
heard it defended and sanctified in a thousand; her ears were familiar
with Bible texts that approved it, but if there were any that
disapproved it they had not been quoted by her pastors; as far as her
experience went, the wise and the good and the holy were unanimous in
the conviction that slavery was right, righteous, sacred, the peculiar
pet of the Deity, and a condition which the slave himself ought to be
daily and nightly thankful for."
Despite his brilliant mind, he grew up not knowing there was anything
wrong with it. When you hold the stick, the world looks different than
if you were on the other end of it.
I'd like to believe that every guy using Lisp is necessarily immune to
all ideology, but that's self-congratulating. I've met many who seem
quite immune, but some are extremely ideological. Hard-headed Smug Lisp
Weenieism was obvious a while ago, which went hand-in-hand with
untrustworthy evangelists who won't suffer any penalties of failure
based on their blind advice.
> As for them benefitting from the status quo,
> it isn't altogether clear that they are. I don't see how I benefit
> from black guys getting locked up for drug dealing in the US, for
> example (especially since I don't even live there).
Of course I'm talking about Americans, not people like you, but I'm
sure you knew that.
PBS points out that marijuana prohibilition was a racist policy.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html
An enormous number of people are imprisoned for this Presidential Drug
of Choice, which even Bush admitted to using. The wealthy aren't
watched like hawks by policemen or pulled over for Driving While Black.
Benefits of our world-beating incarceration include unemployment
numbers going down, since prisoners aren't counted. The middleclass is
frightened of their children growing up poor and their families
disintegrating, so they work harder. Prisoners don't vote, and often
felons lose their voting rights. (As in Florida.) They're low-cost
labor in many states since they can't unionize and have no serious
rights. It's an enormous source of government-funded employment, so
many towns desire new prisons.
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/elections/results.htm
As far as I can tell, people who support this coercion must believe
that us Americans are the most criminal people on the planet. Because
we jail more of our own people than anyone else in the world.
> If by the status
> quo you mean the ability to own property and freely enter into
> contracts,I suppose you might have a point. I don't quite see how
> _elimination_ of such abilities would help anyone -- not because it
> would hurt me but because I believe the use the said rights was
> essential to my _avoiding_ poverty even when I had no
> pre-accumulated property.
Just as Lisp can be boneheadedly destructive depending on your goals, I
don't have any ideological belief in these economic theories you seem
to attribute to me.
However, vulgar red-baiting (and proclaiming that Lisp doesn't have
arrays/loops) deserves some discrediting.
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> You think I said they were "corrupt"? If you rarely perceive the
> downsides of a system, it is almost a truism that you won't be
> particularly aware how bad things are.
Ok, the upside of Capitalism, is that you reap the rewards for
your own doing and planning. The downside is the same ;)
If you don't provide anything, that anybody wants to buy (product,
art, service; that means that you somehow can't run your own
company) and nobody wants to employ you, then you will end up
unemployed. You will probably find people who will help you
through, friends or organizations, and you can always band up with
people, cooperate in a community. But if you don't, sure, the
downsides are there.
> Mark Twain talked about his slaves, in his autobiography:
>
> "As I have said, we lived in a slaveholding community; indeed, when
> slavery perished my mother had been in daily touch with it for sixty
> years. Yet, kind-hearted and compassionate as she was, I think she was
> not conscious that slavery was a bald, grotesque, and unwarrantable
> usurpation. She had never heard it assailed in any pulpit, but had
> heard it defended and sanctified in a thousand; her ears were familiar
> with Bible texts that approved it, but if there were any that
> disapproved it they had not been quoted by her pastors; as far as her
> experience went, the wise and the good and the holy were unanimous in
> the conviction that slavery was right, righteous, sacred, the peculiar
> pet of the Deity, and a condition which the slave himself ought to be
> daily and nightly thankful for."
This is the difference between a system that is justified by any
kind of sermon, or religion, and a system that naturally results
from anything that people do.
People trade, people exchange goods and money in return. People
lend stuff for small rewards. People cooperate, create their own
peasant army, or police, create their own local laws. I think
such a system doesn't need ideological defense, it defends itself,
if only by popping up in form of a black market (or illegal,
untaxed labor, as common in Germany) in systems that try to fight it.
> Despite his brilliant mind, he grew up not knowing there was anything
> wrong with it. When you hold the stick, the world looks different than
> if you were on the other end of it.
There's brilliant, and brilliant. AFAICS, Twain was a writer.
Other people might not be as great, but maybe they did more
thinking about different societal, economic and political systems.
Maybe they grew up in environments where criticism (meaning
open, questioning eyes) was a virtue, and indeed something that
was taught.
> I'd like to believe that every guy using Lisp is necessarily immune to
> all ideology, but that's self-congratulating. I've met many who seem
> quite immune, but some are extremely ideological. Hard-headed Smug Lisp
> Weenieism was obvious a while ago, which went hand-in-hand with
> untrustworthy evangelists who won't suffer any penalties of failure
> based on their blind advice.
I used to be a little socialist, I think. All my life I've been
thinking about all this stuff, and notice facts and try to
integrate these into my picture of the world. Just like I looked
at numerous OSes and prog. languages, I looked at various theories
and models of human cooperation and society. I'm not saying I'm
necessarily right now, but I'm in a place where many others have
to go yet (such as socialists that have never considered the
alternatives, Windows users that don't know anything else, C
dialect users without any further language skills, people who
never left their state or country, people who never learned other
languages and cultures).
> PBS points out that marijuana prohibilition was a racist policy.
> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html
>
> An enormous number of people are imprisoned for this Presidential Drug
> of Choice, which even Bush admitted to using. The wealthy aren't
> watched like hawks by policemen or pulled over for Driving While Black.
The whole war on drugs is racist, hurts developing countries, and
-- above all -- is totally unnecessary. Alcohol is much more
dangerous that some weed, and even cocaine is used by many
managers, and media people without huge problems. I would never
try it, but I think people are responsible for themselves. If
someone jumps out of the window, that's their problem entirely.
> Benefits of our world-beating incarceration include unemployment
> numbers going down, since prisoners aren't counted. The middleclass is
Lies, obviously. These people don't have a job, do they?
> frightened of their children growing up poor and their families
> disintegrating, so they work harder. Prisoners don't vote, and often
> felons lose their voting rights. (As in Florida.) They're low-cost
Which isn't fair either. Why shouldn't criminals decide what way
their country goes? Is Bush afraid that the millions in prison
will set up their own party and dethrone him? :D
> labor in many states since they can't unionize and have no serious
> rights. It's an enormous source of government-funded employment, so
> many towns desire new prisons.
> http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/elections/results.htm
Again, all this is tax-funded and hurts poor families who couldn't
care less what happens to some drug addict.
> As far as I can tell, people who support this coercion must believe
> that us Americans are the most criminal people on the planet. Because
> we jail more of our own people than anyone else in the world.
That's a form of being totalitarian. Prohibiting and prosecuting
everything you don't like, even if it doesn't hurt or affect you
at all. (drugs, religion, abortion)
>>If by the status
>>quo you mean the ability to own property and freely enter into
>>contracts,I suppose you might have a point. I don't quite see how
>>_elimination_ of such abilities would help anyone -- not because it
>>would hurt me but because I believe the use the said rights was
>>essential to my _avoiding_ poverty even when I had no
>>pre-accumulated property.
>
>
> Just as Lisp can be boneheadedly destructive depending on your goals, I
> don't have any ideological belief in these economic theories you seem
> to attribute to me.
Destructive? You mean, Lisp can do SETF? NCONC?
> However, vulgar red-baiting (and proclaiming that Lisp doesn't have
> arrays/loops) deserves some discrediting.
Yes, I think more (unjustified) criticism comes from people who
never did Lisp. Those people often go ahead and develop stuff
like MDAs and other code generation tools, of course not
integrated into the language, requiring expensive tools and
learning curves.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Robert Uhl
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m34qdeg1lc.fsf@4dv.net>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>
> > Prisoners don't vote, and often felons lose their voting rights. (As
> > in Florida.) They're low-cost
>
> Which isn't fair either. Why shouldn't criminals decide what way
> their country goes?
Well, right or wrong the practise of disenfranchising felons dates back
to English law and Germanic custom and was entirely uncontroversial
until very, very recently.
Trying to keep my personal biases out of this most off-topic discussion.
To be on-topic: I recently picked up a copy of PCL and _man_ is it
good. The kind of Lisp book I could have used in college.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
Christos Voskrese! Voistinu Voskrese!
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote:
[...rant...]
Can't you guys move that thread somewhere it belongs? Some soc.*
newsgroup or so? Thanks.
mkb.
Matthias Buelow wrote:
> I wrote:
>
>
>>Can't you guys move that thread somewhere it belongs? Some soc.*
Well, I was simple continuing the discussion. Ignore the thread,
like I ignore some threads. But I don't intend to prolong this
discussion, either, so that should be fine.
> Ah, forgot something.
>
> The magic word: Hitler.
That says what? To satisfy that stupid Usenet "law"? Or do you
like that name? Or do you have Tourette?
Anyway...
Lenin
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uacn51z58.fsf@nhplace.com>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote:
>
> [...rant...]
>
> Can't you guys move that thread somewhere it belongs? Some soc.*
> newsgroup or so? Thanks.
I've said before that this issue is relevant to this group because the
issue of how one makes money with Lisp is relevant to this group, and
because a substantial number of people think free software is the
answer. The ability to discuss that effect "in context" is critical
to us.
Moreover, as discussed obliquely in
http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PFAQ/cross-posting.html
you don't get the 'and' of two newsgroups by cross-posting; you get it
by making a subthread in one or the other group with an appropriate title.
I don't see why soc.whatever wouldn't have as much right to object if we
were interspersing lisp discusison with free software discussion, asking us
to move to a lisp newsgroup. The fact is that from a strictly theoretical
point of view, I think either group is as good as the other.
And, let me make a meta-observation about problems of this kind. I've often
considered the issue of whether various meta-courses, such as "ethics",
should be taught at all. It seems to me that the only people who go to them
are already ethical. Politics is in its own way meta, and if you get only
people who are interested in politics, you lose what politics ought really
be about: the impact on real people. I've come to the conclusion that the
best way to teach ethics is for every "real" domain (chemistry, biology,
computer science, etc.) to take a chapter out on ethics as part of the normal
course of operation, not as part of something you do if you don't like
chemistry or biology of physics. I feel the same, I guess, about politics.
Politics ought not be done simply at the national republican or democratic
convention, it ought to be done by real people in real venues. And this is
one such.
And FINALLY, this is as good a place as I can find to make the following
additional point I've been wanting to make for a while, which I guess is
sort of a corollary or specialization of the meta-observation above:
One of the main reasons I'm angry that the entire Computer Science field
has disempowered itself economically by this whole free software movement
is that there are some very intelligent people, capable of understanding
and discussing "process" in this community. It is taken for granted that
issues of "control structures", dependent and independent variables,
matters of efficiency, matters of worst-case vs best-case coverage, and so
on will be understood as ordinary terms without belaboring. And people can
cut to the quick and really talk about the issues.
I don't think such a discussion is to be had in other venues in the same
form. It would quickly degenerate into divisive buzzwords, etc., because
people in the "real world" don't think that science or math or anything
like that can meaningfully be applied usefully to these issues.
I personally think this has been a remarkably civil discussion as
these things go, with a great deal of light shed on a lot of issues.
Maybe people haven't changed positions, but I certainly have learned a
lot from the people who have spoken in opposition because, on the
whole, have taken my remarks seriously and have responded on point.
I'm personally ready to wind it up for now though that doesn't mean I won't
drop the occasional post in still. Others can wrap it up at their own speed.
But I think, like every other discussion on this newsgroup, the people who
aren't interested should just ignore the thread. I ignore other threads I
am not interested in. Isn't that what one does?
On Sat, 07 May 2005 15:40:51 -0500, Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> This is the difference between a system that is justified by any kind of
> sermon, or religion, and a system that naturally results from anything
> that people do.
This assumption by True Believers always makes me chuckle. Capitalism is
actually very recent. Before that Feudalism was all the go. If you asked
similar people in Feudalism I'm sure you'd get the same responses: "But
feudalism is just natural! People have always defended their lands and
it's natural for rulers to emerge among people!". If you were to try to
point out the problems of feudalism you would in many cases get shrugged
off with comments like "I don't think they're reaaaally problems.
Without them things would be much worse" and "well there's the best
that can be done. And I know that because it's just how things work!"
For most people it's much easier to assume the current way of doing things
is superior to all alternatives. Especially when they can just downplay
the problems of the current system and upplay the problems they guess at
in the other systems. It's too difficult to give serious thought to other
ideas and compare them critically, especially when they know they're right
and the emotional response of having their ideas challenged kicks in.
Incidentally, you even see the same thing in "real" religions; ever heard
a Christian try to tell you that worship is "natural" and everyone needs
to do it even if they choose sex or money as their idol?
Bulent Murtezaoglu wrote:
> example (especially since I don't even live there). If by the status
> quo you mean the ability to own property and freely enter into contracts,
> I suppose you might have a point. I don't quite see how _elimination_
> of such abilities would help anyone -- not because it would hurt me but
> because I believe the use the said rights was essential to my
> _avoiding_ poverty even when I had no pre-accumulated property. (had
> I been less lucky would I sing different tune? dunno. The fact is
I can only say that I'm not a big company owner, and for having
just the possibility to freely live my life I demand more freedom.
I would think that most people criticizing the current
centralism aren' rich either.
> _you_ don't know that either.) These are issues where reasonable
> people of integrity might differ, there is no compelling reason to see
> this as intellectually corrupt people arguing for their interests.
> (Not that I am offended or angry at you, but is my characterization of
> what you imply an unfair one?)
That's the point. No matter what system you have, an "egoist"
Capitalism, or a more socialist system, people *always* argue for
their own interests. It's human nature. That's why it's wrong to
give any one lots of central power. If a group of people
uniformly decide to appoint a leader to govern them, that's a
whole different matter. It's just wrong if I (and 51% other
Germans) appoint a leader to govern us and the other 49%.
> TJG> Oh, it's those guys you think are justified. ;) Who claim
> TJG> democracy = state communism.
>
> Oh all I am saying is that I can _understand_ those arguments. It is
> also clear that they have a very easy job as what's being presented is
> underspecified. If someone came out and said: 'we don't recognize
> private ownership or property, we believe in sanctity of headcounts,
> private contacts between individuals cannot be allowed, we will
> justify coercion for this' I'd say I understand that also.
I couldn't understand the latter example. Take a number of people
isolated from our artificial states, say, some people in the
jungle. Do they justify coercion? sanctify headcounts?
I think they trade among each other. I think they have their own
possessions. Lots of it might be shared, but in bigger tribes
probably people have individual possessions. People don't steal,
they don't kill. When one individual doesn't accept the tribe
laws, they can probably leave and found a new tribe.
So I'm saying that private property and trading are natural; even
Communist countries see a *black* market, but it's a market, built
up by individuals on their own free will. They *want* to trade,
they want property. Why do you think most Americans so much like
their system? Because it largely protects these laws, because its
democracy is the most decentralized (AFAIK).
OTOH, the freedom to just found your own state in your country (on
your own grounds, that is) would probably meet extreme opposition
by police and the military.
If I ever get rich, I might buy some farmland and invite people to
join me... If people come and attack us (we won't attack anyone,
we are peaceful), at least we die with a purpose, instead of
serving an increasingly corrupt system (as tells us some worldwide
corruption index).
BTW, democracy isn't state communism. I would be rather happy
with a nice, decentralized democracy with low taxes and few
regulations, and where laws that invade what I call natural rights
(right to trade, to contract, my own property etc.) wouldn't be
allowed.
I certainly reject the *current* form of "democracy" we have,
where stuff like the DMCA or PATRIOT are allowed, where I pay my
money to Berlin and they do something with it in, say, Southern
Germany. I'll gladly pay for local development, but even that
only when I can partake in the decision and I'm sure that at least
60% local citizens vote for it (my local government (Bremen)
usually wastes money and wastes money on totally useless stuff,
without ever asking citizens...; often they favor one certain
construction company (Hochtief, AFAIK), because some politician
knows the boss there; mostly in the end we see that the whole
state-funded project was crap, loses millions, and we shouldn't
have built it in the first place; construction company and the
bribed politician is happy; state is broke).
It's all about recognizing human nature (egoism) and avoiding
centralism for that reason. Any system that doesn't take this
into account, will fail, or result in gross unfairness for everyone.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
>>>>> "UH" == Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
>> [...] If someone came out and said: 'we don't
>> recognize private ownership or property, we believe in sanctity
>> of headcounts, private contacts between individuals cannot be
>> allowed, we will justify coercion for this' I'd say I
>> understand that also.
UH> I couldn't understand the latter example. Take a number of
UH> people isolated from our artificial states, say, some people
UH> in the jungle. Do they justify coercion? sanctify
UH> headcounts? [...]
Oh all I meant was that advocacy of a vague alternative was presenting
and easy target and that I am able to understand the objections in the
same way I would have been able to understand what is being objected
to had it been presentated in a crisp/clear manner (obviously with a
different list of principles). I didn't mean the example as a system
I or anyone else was advocating -- I was just clowning around. The
context was TJG's observation about the character of the discourse itself,
not the subject of it. [the rest of your posting noted]
cheers,
BM
On Fri, 06 May 2005 18:48:19 +0300, Bulent Murtezaoglu wrote:
> I can't speak for Russell McManus, but what I don't get is:
>
> (1) what's getting in the way of people doing what you suggest
> voluntarily?
Nothing :) . Movements such as Debian or Indymedia have been described to
use the same kind of ideas I'm thinking albeit without the economic part.
There are also many other groups such as collectives which attempt such
ideas for their internal functioning with the economic part included and
they work rather well.
> (2) if there isn't enough volunteers, then how, w/o exercising coercion,
> you intend to get what you want to happen to happen (and keep it
> happening)?
There is no other way. The only way something like this can work is with
popular support. Particularly since the only other alternative as you
suggest is coercion which is contradictory to the principles of what I'm
suggesting. Given that most people upon hearing some of the basic premises
knee-jerk with thoughts of "red commies" going through their heads, I'm
not about to hold my breath hoping it'll happen in my lifetime.
> I _suspect_ people get provoked into what you call rants because they
> sense there's use of force there somewhere and continuous -- albeit
> democratically driven -- coercion later.
I actually advocate consensus rather than democracy where feasible. But
when it comes down to it, when you're trying to make a decision that
affects many, many different people there are almost always going to be
some people unhappy with the eventual decision. There's no solution to
that problem (since the problem is with human diversity, I'd say it's
good that there's no solution), but at least democracy is the best means
of minimising the number of unhappy people. You can call it coercion if
you like but it's no more a form of coercion than any other mode of
decision making. At least this way everyone gets a say.
> RM> Hmm, I think I bit into that bait a bit harder than necessary.
>
> We are all doing it seeing how this is comp.lang.lisp.
Good point :)
From: Don Geddis
Subject: Economic and politics (Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions)
Date:
Message-ID: <87ll6ree5v.fsf_-_@sidious.geddis.org>
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Fri, 06 May 2005:
> The cost of labour I mentioned is intended to be an average used to figure
> what cost a product has.
You're confusing the price of a manufactured product (which we were talking
about), with the hourly wage given to a laborer (which is another interesting
issue where your theory breaks).
In your previous message you wrote (at least twice!):
>>> (+ production-costs
>>> (* price-of-labour average-hours-of-labour-in-production))
This is the price of a manufactured item, in your world.
We all assumed that "price-of-labour" was a constant for your society.
You want it to vary? By industry? By individual?
Do tell: _exactly_ how is that factor to be determined? By an oracle?
By a government bureaucrat? By "consensus"?
You imagine a lot more consensus than you'll ever get with a large group
of real humans.
(By the way: another huge problem with your formula is that you have no
way to account for development costs. Say it takes Intel $1B to design and
manufacturer a new CPU. They'll sell one of them for $500. But it only
costs $100 to make, given marginal production costs and labor hours.
What is the right price, in your economy, for the new CPU? $101? But then
how do they ever make the $1B back? Do you see that surely you need to
spread the upfront cost a little bit to each individual. But the problem is,
that to do that calculation, you need to know how many you're going to sell
over the life of the product. And nobody can predict that with reliability.
It's a business problem with risk and unknowns. So how does your exciting new
economy solve this problem?)
> Of course it may vary from individual to individual and I'd have no problem
> at all with someone getting greater rewards for being more productive than
> average or getting fewer rewards for being less productive.
But you admit that a manufactured item should cost less if it takes less
hours to make? Even if the difference is that a skilled master can make
it faster than a new trainee?
>> Second problem: you haven't accounted for the allocation of scarce
>> resources on the demand side. If you fix prices in this way, you'll find
>> that some items are vastly more popular than other items, despite costing
>> the same to create.
>
> There's two popular solutions that I know of (though there's probably
> others I don't know of). First is to allow price fluctuations
> according to demand and supply while costs of labour in those sectors stay
> close to average.
But wait: allowing prices to vary according to supply and demand is EXACTLY
WHAT FREE MARKETS ARE! That's the clever trick that free markets use, that
presumably you hate. Didn't you, just above, give me the required price of
a manufactured item? You're completely inconsistent here. Either the price
of the thing is determined by your formula (in which case you have shortage
problems), or else the price is determined by supply and demand (in which
case you have a free market). You can't do both. You're trying to cheat.
> The idea is that without huge gaps between rich and poor, demand is less
> likely to be fickle as it is when a few people are excessively rich and,
> say, order more iPods than they use.
No, you understand almost nothing about supply and demand and real economics.
Demand for an item has very little to do with the number of labor hours
that went into its creation. It has a lot to do with how useful the item
is to the purchaser, which is an orthogonal concept.
> The other is a scarcity index. Each production site simply maintains an
> index of their supply relative to demand. When a consumer notices
> one of it's suppliers scarcity index drop indicating less supply (eg
> unexpected drop in natural resources) or increased demand, it simply takes
> that into account in its orders. It can check with the supplier to get
> an idea of whether the change is likely to be temporary or long term and
> determine if it can get by on reserved stock or it needs to investigate
> the feasibility of alternative supplies.
The problem you're not fixing, is the one when a supplier simply chooses not
to make any more items. People want a lot more, but nobody has an incentive
to make one.
Take services. How, in your economy, do you decide how much to charge for
an hour of a doctor's time, vs. an hour of burger flipper's time?
If you're going to try to account for the cost of the doctor getting the M.D.
training, you'll soon be back stuck in the Intel CPU problem with dealing
with upfront costs. You obviously have no solution.
> Of course there's still going to be situations where supply simply can't
> meet demand in which case some sort of rationing is needed.
Yippie! Stalinist Russia lines-around-the-block for the grocery store!
I can't wait.
> That happens even now. So how is that problem currently solved? Purchasing
> power forms a sort of rationing - that needn't change though with the
> abolishing of non-labour forms of income and fairly standard wages no
> longer would there be the problem of ridiculously rich people hoarding all
> they can get.
You're imagining a problem that doesn't really exist. Capitalist economies
may have short-term shortages, but they don't have long term systemic
shortages that never disappear, the way Russia _always_ had lines for
toilet paper, groceries, gas, etc.
But communist countries, and your society, will _consistently_ misproduce
the "wrong" amount of items (vs. supply & demand pricing), and that imbalance
will never go away (because you won't let prices vary in order to attract
additional producers).
> Also producers simply impose rationing by saying things like "X items per
> person" or "first come first serve". Nothing much need change there
> either.
In real societies, the solution winds up being things like black markets,
and under-the-table "illegal" payments, and political power favors, etc.
Basically, corruption. People trying to secretly get around the rules you
are trying to enforce.
> I'd argue such decisions would be better left as a
> collective decision by the people affected.
What if people don't agree? What if you can't come to a consensus?
1000 people want toilet paper. The guy who makes it only wants to make 500
rolls (at the "agreed on" price). Nobody else wants to start making it
(for that price). Yet there's an continual imbalance.
Everybody agrees they want more. Everybody agrees that it sucks that they
don't have enough. How does this agreement help anything? Unless you start
forcing someone to manufacture an item that society needs, but they don't
want to make, I don't see how you ever fix this.
Or: you can abandon your foolish price-setting model, and let prices float
as needed by supply and demand.
> So it seems to me that scarcity wouldn't form any bigger problem than it
> is already.
No, it's a million times worse in your economic model.
> I don't see where the "problem" is with having a black market but feel
> free to fill me in if I've missed it.
You're trying to fix prices, different than what they would be if the guy
who made it and the guy who wants it were to negotiate their own contract.
Since you want them to do something different than they want to do, you need
a state to enforce the rules you want in your economy. They are not natural
rules.
> It seems to me if demand becomes such a problem that people are reduced to
> having to spend much more than cost price for an item they desperately need
> then so be it. As determined by my above suggestions black markets need be
> no more (and more likely less) ubiquitous than they are now in helping fix
> problems of scarcity.
Black markets don't fix scarcity problems in capitalist societies. Prices
rise so that demand drops to the level of what can be supplied in the short
term. That's how capitalist allocation comes back into balance.
> You also forgot to mention problems of unemployment, labour exploitation,
> and irrational inequalities of wealth and power to name a few.
It's a matter of great debate whether those are even problems to be fixed.
It's far from obvious that anything needs to be changed on those topics.
> Those limits are good, but you still have a government run by a group of
> individuals which are far from representative of the total population.
> Most if not all of them have gotten to their position by paying for hugely
> expensive campaigns either by being excessively rich to begin with and/or
> by being backed by rich corporate sponsors.
You don't understand how US elections actually work. Plenty of rich people
have tried, and failed, to "buy" their way into office.
Yes, wealth in a campaign and getting elected are correlated. But your
assumption about cause and effect actually appears to be backwards. People
who look at it now believe that it is wealth which flows to electable people,
not the other way around. (For example, take a look at the recent book
"Freakonomics".)
> In general, a small group of people selected at random from the total
> population will have approximately the same proportion of alternate
> convictions as the total population as simple statistics dictates. So if a
> government were randomly selected there wouldn't be much difference in how
> much tyranny they get up to except that given the population of the ruling
> class is drastically reduced they're in a much better position to bargain
> with eachother and cooperate for their own gain at the expense of the
> population. So a small group of people with control over the decisions
> affecting everyone has on average the same amount of tyrrany as letting
> everyone have a say in their decisions in addition to the increased
> probability of corruption and vested interests inherent in a small group
> of rulers. So in the average case, small groups of people in power is
> always inferior to full democracy.
You're getting confused about a representative democracy vs. a "full"
democracy. That isn't the issue. "Tyranny of the majority" isn't a concern
that a small group will somehow take power and screw the average guy.
The concern is that: any group which manages to get 51% support, if the
government is really unrestricted to majority vote, will likely start
voting horrors onto the losing 49% of the citizens. Without minority
rights built into the constitution, the losers wind up being absolute
losers. Taxed, prevented from participating, executed, etc. And every
vote comes up 51% to 49%, and the minority loses every time.
Your "majority rules" idea is much more like the first Survivor reality
show. Richard Hatch showed the path to success: get a voting block, and
ruthlessly eliminate your opposition (all within the rules). By the time
they figure out you're targeting them, the society has passed the magic
threshold and your 51% approval becomes absolute dictatorial power.
This is yet another problem with your proposed societal structure. You
believe in "full democracy" and "majority rules" and "consensus", but you
have no solution (and apparently not even a realization) for when those
structures start to break down.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
Some people build bridges. You just like to widen the gorge.
-- "Sally Forth" comic
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Economic and politics (Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions)
Date:
Message-ID: <uu0lfb1zw.fsf@nhplace.com>
Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
> (By the way: another huge problem with your formula is that you have
> no way to account for development costs. Say it takes Intel $1B to
> design and manufacturer a new CPU. They'll sell one of them for
> $500. But it only costs $100 to make, given marginal production
> costs and labor hours. What is the right price, in your economy,
> for the new CPU? $101? But then how do they ever make the $1B
> back? Do you see that surely you need to spread the upfront cost a
> little bit to each individual. But the problem is, that to do that
> calculation, you need to know how many you're going to sell over the
> life of the product. And nobody can predict that with reliability.
> It's a business problem with risk and unknowns. So how does your
> exciting new economy solve this problem?)
Don, Don, Don ... You're assuming that the $1B needs to be paid by one
entity. Go back and reconsider how efficiently this all runs if one
million moms and dads are told their kid ran short of money and could
they please send another $1000 because they were busy contributing to
the wealth of the world by working on their share of ·····@home.
Mom and Dad will probably think it sounds very impressive that Johnny
or Janey is able, with that cute little computer they got for Christmas,
to stand up to Intel. They'll be able to tell their friends at work
that their kid is going to one day take over the world... And all at
no real cost to the World. It's magic.
On Fri, 06 May 2005 23:35:56 -0700, Don Geddis wrote:
> You're confusing the price of a manufactured product (which we were
> talking about), with the hourly wage given to a laborer (which is another
> interesting issue where your theory breaks).
No I'm not. I'm simply recognising that the only way to add value to
something is with labour and consequently the value of any good or service
is equivalent to the amount of labour put into it.
> In your previous message you wrote (at least twice!):
>>>> (+ production-costs
>>>> (* price-of-labour average-hours-of-labour-in-production))
>
> This is the price of a manufactured item, in your world.
>
> We all assumed that "price-of-labour" was a constant for your society. You
> want it to vary? By industry? By individual?
Price-of-labour is the value of one hour of an average worker's labour and
is a constant. Since most people would be concerned about individual
productive efforts not being rewarded appropriately, yes I see no reason
for actual individual wages not to differ to reflect the level of labour
value added to society by individuals differing productivity. No, I don't
think it needs to change according to industry.
If my job is to produce 500 units in 5 hours and I pull it off in 3 then I
see no reason for my actual wage to be (* price-of-labour 5/3). Likewise
if I take 7 hours then it could be (* price-of-labour 5/7). Or if I only
produce 300 of the 500 units in my 5 hours then my wage could be (*
price-of-labour 300/500). (In this example the 500 units in 5 hours is
equivalent to 100 units as the number of units an average worker can
produce in 1 hour, as determined by statistical analysis of that form of
production)
> (By the way: another huge problem with your formula is that you have no
> way to account for development costs. Say it takes Intel $1B to design
> and manufacturer a new CPU. They'll sell one of them for $500. But it
> only costs $100 to make, given marginal production costs and labor hours.
> What is the right price, in your economy, for the new CPU? $101? But
> then how do they ever make the $1B back? Do you see that surely you need
> to spread the upfront cost a little bit to each individual. But the
> problem is, that to do that calculation, you need to know how many you're
> going to sell over the life of the product. And nobody can predict that
> with reliability. It's a business problem with risk and unknowns. So how
> does your exciting new economy solve this problem?)
Investments such as R&D need popular support before they're taken on. Such
an investment would need to be proposed with projected budgets etc by an
interested group of individuals who see the need, just as a group of
individuals seeking a grant might do now. Then everyone who would have
a hand in paying for it has the option to vote for or against this
investment according to how needed they consider it to be. Should an
investment get the go ahead, R&D labour and production materials
are paid according to the requirements of the investment just as any other
production is. The source of this labour would come from banks similar to
what we have now but would differ in that they would not participate in
any form of interest.
> But you admit that a manufactured item should cost less if it takes less
> hours to make? Even if the difference is that a skilled master can make
> it faster than a new trainee?
Not quite. I said that an item should be valued according to average hours
it takes to produce the item multiplied by the cost of labour per hour and
added to any other costs gone into making the item. Who actually makes
the item doesn't affect the cost. If skilled masters produce quicker then
it's they who are rewarded for their effort, not the consumer.
>> There's two popular solutions that I know of (though there's probably
>> others I don't know of). First is to allow price fluctuations according
>> to demand and supply while costs of labour in those sectors stay close
>> to average.
>
> But wait: allowing prices to vary according to supply and demand is
> EXACTLY WHAT FREE MARKETS ARE! That's the clever trick that free markets
> use, that presumably you hate. Didn't you, just above, give me the
> required price of a manufactured item? You're completely inconsistent
> here. Either the price of the thing is determined by your formula (in
> which case you have shortage problems), or else the price is determined by
> supply and demand (in which case you have a free market). You can't do
> both. You're trying to cheat.
I sketched over details so I can see how it looks like I'm being
inconsistent, but there's several alternatives to the system I propose,
and in my view I see them all capable of coexisting and cooperating with
eachother. Essentially, the market I mentioned is the "Black Market"
mentioned by you and other people. Only it's not something illegal so
"Black Market" is a useless term. Such a marke t would be people who
aren't really interested in the particular layout I have in mind and would
rather continue to use a market. And as I've said, there's no reason to
stop them so long as they don't participate in capitalist methods of
extortion like interest or rent.
In the version of the system I've mostly talked about it's the second
solution I mention below that would be used most.
>> The idea is that without huge gaps between rich and poor, demand is less
>> likely to be fickle as it is when a few people are excessively rich and,
>> say, order more iPods than they use.
>
> No, you understand almost nothing about supply and demand and real
> economics.
>
> Demand for an item has very little to do with the number of labor hours
> that went into its creation. It has a lot to do with how useful the item
> is to the purchaser, which is an orthogonal concept.
I never suggested anything about demand having anything to do with labour
hours put into production. What I said was markets that don't have huge
gaps between rich or poor (attainable, according to its advocates, by
simply abolishing interest and rent while leaving the market to work
everything else out) are less likely to result in excessively rich people
who go about denying poor people of access to scarce resources by
out-purchasing them. In other respects, the scarcity principle in this
particular alternative (not the one I have been mostly advocating,
but not one I oppose) would be solved in the same way any other market
solves it - by prices.
>> The other is a scarcity index. Each production site simply maintains an
>> index of their supply relative to demand. When a consumer notices one of
>> it's suppliers scarcity index drop indicating less supply (eg unexpected
>> drop in natural resources) or increased demand, it simply takes that
>> into account in its orders. It can check with the supplier to get an
>> idea of whether the change is likely to be temporary or long term and
>> determine if it can get by on reserved stock or it needs to investigate
>> the feasibility of alternative supplies.
>
> The problem you're not fixing, is the one when a supplier simply chooses
> not to make any more items. People want a lot more, but nobody has an
> incentive to make one.
How's that worse than an item getting taken off the market in the current
system for the same reasons? It's not a problem unique to any system; it
doesn't matter what system you use, if people aren't producing an item
then nobody's going to be able to consume it.
Or if what you mean is not that nobody is making any of the items, but
that less people are making the items then the solution to that's no
different to the ones I've already described. It basically would require
rationing. The market's no different, by raising prices to lower demand
it's just rationing in a manner that favours people who are wealthy enough
to afford the new prices. Personally, I consider such discrimination
against the underprivileged to be one of the bad qualities of a market.
> Take services. How, in your economy, do you decide how much to charge for
> an hour of a doctor's time, vs. an hour of burger flipper's time?
>
> If you're going to try to account for the cost of the doctor getting the
> M.D. training, you'll soon be back stuck in the Intel CPU problem with
> dealing with upfront costs. You obviously have no solution.
Why do you assume I have no solution before I've even offered one?
Obviously you're more interested in rhetoric than actually judging the
worth of my system.
It is as you say like the Intel CPU problem; it's a problem of
investment. And it's solved the same way. The society may choose to
sponsor peoples' education in the same way other forms of investment are
considered. So someone wishing to be a MD simply needs to request entry
into education as a MD and fulfill whatever prerequisites are required for
that entry.
I don't think an average MD should earn any different rate than an
average burger flipper. In my society investment costs of education are
absorbed by the system so it's not like a qualified MD has any claim
that they should be repayed for their investment in education. In the end,
an MD is still putting hours of labour in like a burger flipper is. They
should be rewarded according to their productivity in their task, not
according to their societal rank.
I think one of the beauties of this is that it gets rid of a lot of crap
MDs. Crap MDs are almost always MDs who are soley in it for the money.
The best MDs are almost always the ones who are MDs primarily because they
find it personally fulfilling. Not only does the financial incentive to
become a MD result in crap MDs, but it also means people who would
otherwise make excellent MDs are denied the opportunity because the money
chasers lower supply of MD education opportunities. The same goes for any
profession.
>> That happens even now. So how is that problem currently solved?
>> Purchasing power forms a sort of rationing - that needn't change though
>> with the abolishing of non-labour forms of income and fairly standard
>> wages no longer would there be the problem of ridiculously rich people
>> hoarding all they can get.
>
> You're imagining a problem that doesn't really exist. Capitalist
> economies may have short-term shortages, but they don't have long term
> systemic shortages that never disappear, the way Russia _always_ had lines
> for toilet paper, groceries, gas, etc.
>
> But communist countries, and your society, will _consistently_
> misproduce the "wrong" amount of items (vs. supply & demand pricing),
> and that imbalance will never go away (because you won't let prices vary
> in order to attract additional producers).
Russia had lines of toilet paper, groceries etc because people were
rewarded according to rank rather than productivity so there was less
incentive for individual productivity. Also, supply was decided centrally
by a government. Of course that's going to result in misallocation of
resources. It's the producers themselves who need to figure out how to
meet demand, not some egotistic government.
By the way, argument by analogy only works when the subject and object of
the analogy are sufficiently similar to draw convincing parallels. You're
wasting your time trying to pretend that my system will be anything like
Russia.
>> Also producers simply impose rationing by saying things like "X items
>> per person" or "first come first serve". Nothing much need change there
>> either.
>
> In real societies, the solution winds up being things like black markets,
> and under-the-table "illegal" payments, and political power favors, etc.
> Basically, corruption. People trying to secretly get around the rules you
> are trying to enforce.
In my system, there's no "enforcing" of rules. Black markets would just be
ordinary markets of people attempting their own version of my system.
There'd be no political powers to get favours from. Under the table
illegal payments is an interesting one I hadn't thought of and I'd myself
be interested to see how the people of my society figure a solution.
But look, you mentioned 3 problems in capitalism resulting from scarcity,
yet my system only potentially suffers from 1 of them. Who's got the
bigger problem with scarcity?
>> I'd argue such decisions would be better left as a collective decision
>> by the people affected.
>
> What if people don't agree? What if you can't come to a consensus?
Consensus probably wouldn't be the best tool for something as
controversial and necessary a decision as rationing. I'd say simple
democracy would work better for something like this. It'd only be needed
in the very worst case scenarios anyway, and it's pretty clear by
looking at scarcity now that problems of scarcity need not get so bad as
to need that kind of systematic rationing very often.
> 1000 people want toilet paper. The guy who makes it only wants to make
> 500 rolls (at the "agreed on" price). Nobody else wants to start making
> it (for that price). Yet there's an continual imbalance.
What you're arguing only makes sense in a restricted market where
someone's fixed prices too low. But I'm not talking about a market
remember? If a guy's hired to make toilet paper at a 1000+ roll quota as
determined by average toilet paper productivity, he's not going to get
paid his full "agreed on price". And what exactly is this about the price
being "agreed on"? Labour price is simply a static value given to average
productivity in my system. It doesn't even matter what that value is since
it's the same for everyone and is the only value which affects prices.
There's nothing to agree on.
Lastly, I've already explained how scarcity is solved in my system. Why do
you think your example is any different to any other kind of scarcity? If
there's a scarcity of toilet papers, consumers need to adjust their
consumption habits or find an alternative from say the facial tissue
industry. Since the problem is that only one guy wants to make toilet
paper, then perhaps investment into researching how to increase toilet
paper production through machinery needs to be discussed or researching
how to decrease the unpleasantness of the task of creating toilet paper so
more people are willing to do the job.
>> I don't see where the "problem" is with having a black market but feel
>> free to fill me in if I've missed it.
>
> You're trying to fix prices, different than what they would be if the guy
> who made it and the guy who wants it were to negotiate their own contract.
> Since you want them to do something different than they want to do, you
> need a state to enforce the rules you want in your economy. They are not
> natural rules.
There's no need for a state to enforce the rules. All it needs is a bunch
of people willing to work together to make it happen. In my system if
other people want their market economy then they can have it so long as
they're not exploiting labour through interest or rent or participating in
other forms of coercion.
There's nothing unnatural about a bunch of people getting together and
agreeing to cooperate in a certain way.
>> It seems to me if demand becomes such a problem that people are reduced
>> to having to spend much more than cost price for an item they
>> desperately need then so be it. As determined by my above suggestions
>> black markets need be no more (and more likely less) ubiquitous than
>> they are now in helping fix problems of scarcity.
>
> Black markets don't fix scarcity problems in capitalist societies. Prices
> rise so that demand drops to the level of what can be supplied in the
> short term. That's how capitalist allocation comes back into balance.
Oh? So why are there black markets in capitalist societies if not to
fulfill demand by supplying goods and services that would otherwise be
scarce?
>> You also forgot to mention problems of unemployment, labour
>> exploitation, and irrational inequalities of wealth and power to name a
>> few.
>
> It's a matter of great debate whether those are even problems to be fixed.
>
> It's far from obvious that anything needs to be changed on those topics.
I'm tempted to see how on earth you could possibly debate that they aren't
problems. But if you're that blind to your own system's problems that's
obviously going to be too long, tiring and fruitless a tangent.
> You don't understand how US elections actually work. Plenty of rich
> people have tried, and failed, to "buy" their way into office.
>
> Yes, wealth in a campaign and getting elected are correlated. But your
> assumption about cause and effect actually appears to be backwards.
> People who look at it now believe that it is wealth which flows to
> electable people, not the other way around. (For example, take a look at
> the recent book "Freakonomics".)
It doesn't matter how they get wealthy, what matters is that it's only
wealthy people and people sponsored by wealthy people who rule the US and
most countries who ruled by representatives. And that *is* how US
elections work. So what if many people who attempt to buy their way into
office don't make it? What matters is that all the ones who get into
office are the few remaining people who attempted to buy their way into
office.
>> In general, a small group of people selected at random from the total
>> population will have approximately the same proportion of alternate
>> convictions as the total population as simple statistics dictates. So if
>> a government were randomly selected there wouldn't be much difference in
>> how much tyranny they get up to except that given the population of the
>> ruling class is drastically reduced they're in a much better position to
>> bargain with eachother and cooperate for their own gain at the expense
>> of the population. So a small group of people with control over the
>> decisions affecting everyone has on average the same amount of tyrrany
>> as letting everyone have a say in their decisions in addition to the
>> increased probability of corruption and vested interests inherent in a
>> small group of rulers. So in the average case, small groups of people in
>> power is always inferior to full democracy.
>
> You're getting confused about a representative democracy vs. a "full"
> democracy. That isn't the issue. "Tyranny of the majority" isn't a
> concern that a small group will somehow take power and screw the average
> guy.
Who said that's what tyranny of the majority was? That wasn't my point. My
point was a simple statistical proof that minority rule leads to tyranny
more often worse than majority rule. As such full democracy is superior in
preventing tyranny than any form of rule by minority and "Tyranny of the
majority" is the least evil.
> The concern is that: any group which manages to get 51% support, if the
> government is really unrestricted to majority vote, will likely start
> voting horrors onto the losing 49% of the citizens. Without minority
> rights built into the constitution, the losers wind up being absolute
> losers. Taxed, prevented from participating, executed, etc. And every
> vote comes up 51% to 49%, and the minority loses every time.
What, you think it's EASIER to convince 51% of the total population to do
something evil than it is to convince a small group of people much smaller
than 51% of the total population?
From: Ulrich Hobelmann
Subject: Re: Economic and politics (Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions)
Date:
Message-ID: <3e4t29F182dgU1@individual.net>
Sorry, long.
Robert Marlow wrote:
> On Fri, 06 May 2005 23:35:56 -0700, Don Geddis wrote:
>
>
>>You're confusing the price of a manufactured product (which we were
>>talking about), with the hourly wage given to a laborer (which is another
>>interesting issue where your theory breaks).
>
>
> No I'm not. I'm simply recognising that the only way to add value to
> something is with labour and consequently the value of any good or service
> is equivalent to the amount of labour put into it.
One is cost. What you sell it for is price (which is driven by
demand, as Don argues, and shouldn't be artificially fixed). The
difference (that you want to abolish, it seems) is profit. That's
the reason why people produce something in the first place, or why
they invest capital in developing tools to produce something
better or faster.
> Price-of-labour is the value of one hour of an average worker's labour and
> is a constant. Since most people would be concerned about individual
[...]
Just like prices of goods *will* be demand-driven (by the people
demanding them; if society doesn't allow this, a black market will
appear), prices of labor will be demand-driven as well. I don't
see any reason to do anything about this.
> Investments such as R&D need popular support before they're taken on. Such
> an investment would need to be proposed with projected budgets etc by an
> interested group of individuals who see the need, just as a group of
> individuals seeking a grant might do now. Then everyone who would have
It can be a group of individuals funding a not-for-profit research
endeavor, or a company doing it for profit (R&D). If a company
invents the wheel, soon after that others will follow. Patents
would only hurt here. See how competitors followed Henry Ford in
producing cars (to the good of everyone), just because they were
allowed to (no patents on cars, I don't know about parts...).
> a hand in paying for it has the option to vote for or against this
> investment according to how needed they consider it to be. Should an
> investment get the go ahead, R&D labour and production materials
> are paid according to the requirements of the investment just as any other
> production is. The source of this labour would come from banks similar to
> what we have now but would differ in that they would not participate in
> any form of interest.
Those who want to pay, pay. If its a company, the results belong
to the group of investors, and know-how could be delivered to
paying clients, as consulting. Thus, the investment cost is later
spread out among users of the research.
>>But you admit that a manufactured item should cost less if it takes less
>>hours to make? Even if the difference is that a skilled master can make
>>it faster than a new trainee?
>
>
> Not quite. I said that an item should be valued according to average hours
> it takes to produce the item multiplied by the cost of labour per hour and
What is the cost of labor per hour? Isn't this cost only
determined *after* you see how productive a worker is? Certainly
in a market this would be the case.
> added to any other costs gone into making the item. Who actually makes
> the item doesn't affect the cost. If skilled masters produce quicker then
> it's they who are rewarded for their effort, not the consumer.
The producing company would probably choose workers, so that their
salary doesn't affect the cost, yes. For certain tasks, however,
(coding) one good developer should be preferred to two
twice-as-bad ones, as mistakes are usually expensive, and as
design from one mind is (usually) better than committee design.
The company would reward good workers by paying them more, so that
they don't run away. This actually happens in our world, because
companies don't want everybody to leave just because they are
cheapskates with salaries.
> I sketched over details so I can see how it looks like I'm being
> inconsistent, but there's several alternatives to the system I propose,
> and in my view I see them all capable of coexisting and cooperating with
> eachother. Essentially, the market I mentioned is the "Black Market"
> mentioned by you and other people. Only it's not something illegal so
> "Black Market" is a useless term. Such a marke t would be people who
> aren't really interested in the particular layout I have in mind and would
> rather continue to use a market. And as I've said, there's no reason to
> stop them so long as they don't participate in capitalist methods of
> extortion like interest or rent.
Harhar. You want to forbid me to lend my super-tool to your
worker, so that he could be much more productive? The same if I
lend him money for buying a supertool?
I'd certainly want to have the possibility to take a credit to pay
for grad school if I want to, or to buy some cool Lisp
implementation. Other people might too, because they want be able
to invest in their future.
> I never suggested anything about demand having anything to do with labour
> hours put into production. What I said was markets that don't have huge
> gaps between rich or poor (attainable, according to its advocates, by
> simply abolishing interest and rent while leaving the market to work
> everything else out) are less likely to result in excessively rich people
there it is:
> who go about denying poor people of access to scarce resources by
> out-purchasing them. In other respects, the scarcity principle in this
> particular alternative (not the one I have been mostly advocating,
> but not one I oppose) would be solved in the same way any other market
> solves it - by prices.
But weren't you just saying that rich people shouldn't outbuy the
poor? That's what happens with prices, according to your theory.
In my theory:
If rich people start to buy all those iPods that students would
like to have, too, then production will expand and become cheaper.
That's because profit gives producers an incentive to produce more.
Abolishing interest (which is a natural consequence of getting
something back for lending your money instead of buying a Ferrari
with it) only quenches investment and reduces economic growth.
You can't build an economy on consumption alone. Investment is
important.
>>>The other is a scarcity index. Each production site simply maintains an
>>>index of their supply relative to demand. When a consumer notices one of
>>>it's suppliers scarcity index drop indicating less supply (eg unexpected
>>>drop in natural resources) or increased demand, it simply takes that
>>>into account in its orders. It can check with the supplier to get an
>>>idea of whether the change is likely to be temporary or long term and
>>>determine if it can get by on reserved stock or it needs to investigate
>>>the feasibility of alternative supplies.
>>
>>The problem you're not fixing, is the one when a supplier simply chooses
>>not to make any more items. People want a lot more, but nobody has an
>>incentive to make one.
>
>
> How's that worse than an item getting taken off the market in the current
> system for the same reasons? It's not a problem unique to any system; it
> doesn't matter what system you use, if people aren't producing an item
> then nobody's going to be able to consume it.
If nobody buys it, the product *should* be taken off market, as
its production costs are bigger than what people are willing to
pay. If it is profitable, production will continue. If people
*want* to have the product, they should be willing to pay more, so
that production *is* profitable.
If people want an item that's not produced, then someone will
found a company, or invest money in it, because there is a profit
to make. Sooner or later this opportunity will be discovered.
You might even suggest it to investors, or do it yourself, to
accelerate this.
> Or if what you mean is not that nobody is making any of the items, but
> that less people are making the items then the solution to that's no
> different to the ones I've already described. It basically would require
> rationing. The market's no different, by raising prices to lower demand
> it's just rationing in a manner that favours people who are wealthy enough
> to afford the new prices. Personally, I consider such discrimination
> against the underprivileged to be one of the bad qualities of a market.
No, if I can sell all 100 supertools I made at a good profit
margin, I'll produce more. Competitors will appear and try to
make some profit too. Supply rises up to demand. Prices (and
margins) shrink due to competition. Take the PC industry: dirt
cheap, almost no profit margins left. Overproduction means that
HP and others might consider leaving the business to Dell.
> It is as you say like the Intel CPU problem; it's a problem of
> investment. And it's solved the same way. The society may choose to
> sponsor peoples' education in the same way other forms of investment are
> considered. So someone wishing to be a MD simply needs to request entry
> into education as a MD and fulfill whatever prerequisites are required for
> that entry.
But as MDs are rarer than burger flippers, and because their job
involves life and death, they are paid more. So everybody wants
to get on MD (in Germany '99, the chancellor cried "we need more
CS people, and it pays well"; suddenly *everybody* started
studying it). Who pays for all those students getting an
education? Half of them probably suck and quit halfway through
their degree.
Scholarships work better: good students that want an MD get some
money from those people who care (the ones you mention above).
Everyone else has to pay themselves; decide if they want to make
the investment (take a credit; save for it; whatever).
> I don't think an average MD should earn any different rate than an
> average burger flipper. In my society investment costs of education are
> absorbed by the system so it's not like a qualified MD has any claim
> that they should be repayed for their investment in education. In the end,
> an MD is still putting hours of labour in like a burger flipper is. They
> should be rewarded according to their productivity in their task, not
> according to their societal rank.
Then people will flip burgers, as it doesn't involve studying hard
stuff for years and years, but pays immediately. You won't have
any doctors (well, some few). There are different salaries for a
reason! This isn't societal rank, but Return On Investment. If
you invest more, you might gain more.
Some people study a lot, some students don't care. Your choice
how much you invest, what lifestyle you lead, if pop music, booze,
and girls are your priority at 16, or if you choose to be the best
in your field, or want to discover how the world works.
It's ridiculous if people consciously choose one lifestyle and
later come begging because they suck and need money or a job.
Your life is a business: you have limited time and money, and you
do with those scarce resources how you choose to do.
> I think one of the beauties of this is that it gets rid of a lot of crap
> MDs. Crap MDs are almost always MDs who are soley in it for the money.
If you are a crap MD (yes, I hate them) then you won't last, I
hope. That's what good institutions are for. If someone sucks,
they deserve to fail their studies, no matter how much fees they
pay. In their own interest, other MDs will usually discover the
sucker quickly. After all it hurts *their* business and their
reputation.
> The best MDs are almost always the ones who are MDs primarily because they
> find it personally fulfilling. Not only does the financial incentive to
> become a MD result in crap MDs, but it also means people who would
> otherwise make excellent MDs are denied the opportunity because the money
> chasers lower supply of MD education opportunities. The same goes for any
> profession.
Those who find it fulfilling will end up the best. Not the other
way. A bad MD will have trouble finding customers, I'm sure. How
often and how long do people keep buying at "the crappy-used-car
dealer in town"?
I'm crying for higher standards in CS education, because coders
that suck hurt my reputation. The "diploma" becomes inflationary,
it loses value, just like the originally good Gymnasium (high
school) degree isn't worth anything anymore, because most people
get it, even if they are totally unable to study at a university.
> Russia had lines of toilet paper, groceries etc because people were
> rewarded according to rank rather than productivity so there was less
> incentive for individual productivity. Also, supply was decided centrally
> by a government. Of course that's going to result in misallocation of
> resources. It's the producers themselves who need to figure out how to
> meet demand, not some egotistic government.
True, I can see the difference btw. Commie Russia and your system.
But the above flaws remain.
> In my system, there's no "enforcing" of rules. Black markets would just be
> ordinary markets of people attempting their own version of my system.
> There'd be no political powers to get favours from. Under the table
> illegal payments is an interesting one I hadn't thought of and I'd myself
> be interested to see how the people of my society figure a solution.
People would flock to the black, legal, market, and abandon your
system I suppose, mainly because the market offers more incentives
for people who want to deliver.
> But look, you mentioned 3 problems in capitalism resulting from scarcity,
> yet my system only potentially suffers from 1 of them. Who's got the
> bigger problem with scarcity?
Your system, see above.
> Consensus probably wouldn't be the best tool for something as
> controversial and necessary a decision as rationing. I'd say simple
> democracy would work better for something like this. It'd only be needed
> in the very worst case scenarios anyway, and it's pretty clear by
> looking at scarcity now that problems of scarcity need not get so bad as
> to need that kind of systematic rationing very often.
But why force people into rationing with democracy (tyranny of the
majority), when a free market expands production until demand can
be met?
>>1000 people want toilet paper. The guy who makes it only wants to make
>>500 rolls (at the "agreed on" price). Nobody else wants to start making
>>it (for that price). Yet there's an continual imbalance.
>
>
> What you're arguing only makes sense in a restricted market where
> someone's fixed prices too low. But I'm not talking about a market
> remember? If a guy's hired to make toilet paper at a 1000+ roll quota as
> determined by average toilet paper productivity, he's not going to get
> paid his full "agreed on price". And what exactly is this about the price
> being "agreed on"? Labour price is simply a static value given to average
> productivity in my system. It doesn't even matter what that value is since
> it's the same for everyone and is the only value which affects prices.
> There's nothing to agree on.
But why would he produce more TP if he doesn't make a profit? If
he only gets money for labor he puts in? I guess in that system I
would be a productive (fast-working) burger flipper, because
that's the easiest to do and would pay well. Nobody would build
that TP factory.
> Lastly, I've already explained how scarcity is solved in my system. Why do
> you think your example is any different to any other kind of scarcity? If
> there's a scarcity of toilet papers, consumers need to adjust their
> consumption habits or find an alternative from say the facial tissue
> industry. Since the problem is that only one guy wants to make toilet
> paper, then perhaps investment into researching how to increase toilet
> paper production through machinery needs to be discussed or researching
> how to decrease the unpleasantness of the task of creating toilet paper so
> more people are willing to do the job.
You suggest people buy facial tissue instead of TP? Come on! A
free market gives you just as much TP as you need. No need to
upset consumers.
If people want to cooperate in TP production, as you suggest
above, they can do that in a free market too. They can found a
company (and share the shares), or finance a non-profit TP
producer, with all the risk of a company and no profit in it for
them. Go ahead ;)
> There's no need for a state to enforce the rules. All it needs is a bunch
> of people willing to work together to make it happen. In my system if
> other people want their market economy then they can have it so long as
> they're not exploiting labour through interest or rent or participating in
> other forms of coercion.
The other way round: In a market economy, you can have your
system; it already exists. People can cooperate as much as they
want. Non-profits are even tax-exempt in some (most?) countries
(well, if there are no profits anyway, taxes would be pointless :D).
> There's nothing unnatural about a bunch of people getting together and
> agreeing to cooperate in a certain way.
No, it is even encouraged. Capitalism is not against people
fighting for their food. It's about intelligent, profitable
cooperation. Usually they only cooperate, if that is worth it for
all involved parties.
Organizations are stronger than individual people.
>>Black markets don't fix scarcity problems in capitalist societies. Prices
>>rise so that demand drops to the level of what can be supplied in the
>>short term. That's how capitalist allocation comes back into balance.
>
>
> Oh? So why are there black markets in capitalist societies if not to
> fulfill demand by supplying goods and services that would otherwise be
> scarce?
In a truly free system you wouldn't need a black market. We have
black markets because of *price-fixing* and contract constraints.
High minimum wages (well, this one's subjective) and regulations
(like in Germany) make people do under-the-counter deals, like
asking the plumber to fix your sink for $50 cash, instead of doing
all the paperwork and paying taxes, health insurance etc. It
happens because both parties profit from it. The government is
angry, because it's absolute power isn't acknowledged, and because
nobody pays them for their useless non-work (bureaucracy).
>>>You also forgot to mention problems of unemployment, labour
>>>exploitation, and irrational inequalities of wealth and power to name a
>>>few.
>>
>>It's a matter of great debate whether those are even problems to be fixed.
>>
>>It's far from obvious that anything needs to be changed on those topics.
>
>
> I'm tempted to see how on earth you could possibly debate that they aren't
> problems. But if you're that blind to your own system's problems that's
> obviously going to be too long, tiring and fruitless a tangent.
We don't have a free market, so it's hard to say, how much
unemployment there would be. Currently there's way too much
governmental involvement in the economy, so markets aren't really
balanced. How can you compete against a government?
> It doesn't matter how they get wealthy, what matters is that it's only
> wealthy people and people sponsored by wealthy people who rule the US and
> most countries who ruled by representatives. And that *is* how US
> elections work. So what if many people who attempt to buy their way into
> office don't make it? What matters is that all the ones who get into
> office are the few remaining people who attempted to buy their way into
> office.
Hmmm. Don't know. I generally don't trust others who want to
make decisions for me, and force me to abide by them. If some law
is paid for, instead of the will of the mob or majority that only
makes it slightly worse.
(Most Germans who vote read BILD, the more-than-stupid magazine
(not even newspaper; I've heard that they aren't allowed to call
themselves that anymore :D). I don't expect them to remotely
understand the issues, as they don't really spend time thinking
about them. Generally, I have trouble to be ruled by people less
smart than I am; for that reason I refused military service.)
>>You're getting confused about a representative democracy vs. a "full"
>>democracy. That isn't the issue. "Tyranny of the majority" isn't a
>>concern that a small group will somehow take power and screw the average
>>guy.
>
>
> Who said that's what tyranny of the majority was? That wasn't my point. My
> point was a simple statistical proof that minority rule leads to tyranny
> more often worse than majority rule. As such full democracy is superior in
> preventing tyranny than any form of rule by minority and "Tyranny of the
> majority" is the least evil.
A majority is less harmful than bought laws, yes. But I don't
like it nonetheless.
A citizen-democracy that would vote not on party-packages, but on
*individual issues* would be MUCH better than the status quo, as
it would be very decentralized.
> What, you think it's EASIER to convince 51% of the total population to do
> something evil than it is to convince a small group of people much smaller
> than 51% of the total population?
No, of course if the *population* would ever vote on individual
laws, we'd be much better off. Say, every two months we could
vote on all laws that were to be passed.
I don't like the majority, but it would be better than having 300
bribed policitians decide what they think is the will of the people.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
On Sat, 07 May 2005 17:16:42 -0500, Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
Ulrich, I'd be more inclined to reply to your message if you bothered to
read my original post properly. Most of your points are things I've
already addressed or you've misread/misunderstood.
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Sun, 08 May 2005:
> I'm simply recognising that the only way to add value to something is with
> labour
That's not true. A whole package of things is required to add value to
something, and labor is generally (but not necessarily always) part of that
package. But that's a different statement.
In any case, it doesn't matter whether we agree on this point, because your
conclusion doesn't follow.
> and consequently the value of any good or service is equivalent to the
> amount of labour put into it.
No, that is not a consequent. Even if your antecedent were true.
I know you _wish_ it was true, and you're trying to design an economy/society
that forces it to be true, but it isn't logically true. In capitalist
economies, for example the value of a good or service is determined by those
who use/purchase it, and has very little to do with the amount of human labor
involved in its manufacturing.
And utility will continue to be determined that way, even if you fix prices
using your formula (which is based on labor hours). That may fix prices, but
it won't change true utility/value, which is always in the eye of the beholder
and generally somewhat different for each individual.
>> We all assumed that "price-of-labour" was a constant for your society. You
>> want it to vary? By industry? By individual?
>
> Price-of-labour is the value of one hour of an average worker's labour and
> is a constant. [...] No, I don't
> think it needs to change according to industry.
OK, now your new economy is going to have huge labor shortages. Since you're
planning on paying everybody the same hourly wage, regardless of the work,
then everyone will flock to the easy/fun jobs, and nobody will be willing to
do the difficult/demanding/unpleasant work in society. Or work that requires
significant (or unpleasant) training. After all, there is nothing to be
gained personally!
So you'll have tons of lifeguards on the beachs, but no garbage men, and
nobody to clean and repair the sewers, and no electricians, and no doctors.
While your society will suffer mightily, no individual will make a different
choice, because wages of the much worse job are fixed by you to be the same
as the much more pleasant jobs.
How do you propose to solve this new problem, that there are no employees
available for hire (at the fixed wages) for all the bad jobs?
> Investments such as R&D need popular support before they're taken on. Such
> an investment would need to be proposed with projected budgets etc by an
> interested group of individuals who see the need
Where does the money come from to put into such R&D budgets? What is the
source of the money?
> just as a group of individuals seeking a grant might do now.
The interesting R&D that I was talking about, in our current society, is
funded by investors who are looking for a return on their investment, in order
to balance the significant risk that the effort might fail.
You have outlawed interest/rents in your society. Why would anyone donate
money to such an R&D effort?
> The source of this labour would come from banks similar to what we have now
> but would differ in that they would not participate in any form of
> interest.
Where do the banks get the money, in your society?
In our current society, they only have money available because they promise
interest to the people/organizations that have the money to begin with.
You don't allow interest. Why would your banks have any money available to
lend out? And, in fact, why would they bother to be banks in the first place,
since even if they had money you aren't allowing them to earn a profit with
it? It would seem that banks couldn't exist, since they can't borrow money
from anyone, and they can earn a living with it even if they had it.
You seem to have a big missing whole in your theory, which is how to account
for doing R&D.
> in my view I see them all capable of coexisting and cooperating with
> eachother. Essentially, the market I mentioned is the "Black Market"
> mentioned by you and other people. Only it's not something illegal so
> "Black Market" is a useless term. Such a marke t would be people who aren't
> really interested in the particular layout I have in mind and would rather
> continue to use a market. And as I've said, there's no reason to stop them
OK, although this seems _very_ different from what you proposed in your
earlier messages. Now it looks like you're happy to let prices float to
the supply/demand intersection point. You're right that this will solve the
problem of shortages.
But you misled us by writing that formula so many times, claiming to set the
cost of an item for sale. In fact, you don't care about that price after all.
It now seems that your big concern is merely fixing labor wages (and outlawing
ownership/interest/rents). That's got different problems (which I outlined
above). The reason you got the responses you did in the past (from myself as
well as others) is because you were far from clear in what you cared about.
So: you don't care about fixing market prices, and you're happy to have
free market prices. OK, fine.
> What I said was markets that don't have huge gaps between rich or poor are
> less likely to result in excessively rich people who go about denying poor
> people of access to scarce resources by out-purchasing them.
You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Very few items
are scarce resources just because rich people outbuy poor people.
Bill Gates and/or Larry Ellison could presumably purchase all the hamburgers
that McDonald's makes in a year, but somehow I'm still able to go to my
local franchise and pick one up for a dollar.
The gap between the rich and the poor has very little to do with what the
poor are able to purchase. If there were fewer rich people, the poor would
not suddenly have the ability to buy more stuff.
>> The problem you're not fixing, is the one when a supplier simply chooses
>> not to make any more items. People want a lot more, but nobody has an
>> incentive to make one.
>
> How's that worse than an item getting taken off the market in the current
> system for the same reasons? It's not a problem unique to any system; it
> doesn't matter what system you use, if people aren't producing an item
> then nobody's going to be able to consume it.
This discussion was all when you misled us by your talk of fixing prices.
That's what leads to the scarcity. You now seem to have changed your mind,
and no longer care about fixing prices.
With floating prices, such scarcity disappears because the price rises,
and suddenly the supplier is much more interested in making more items.
> Or if what you mean is not that nobody is making any of the items, but
> that less people are making the items then the solution to that's no
> different to the ones I've already described. It basically would require
> rationing. The market's no different, by raising prices to lower demand
> it's just rationing in a manner that favours people who are wealthy enough
> to afford the new prices. Personally, I consider such discrimination
> against the underprivileged to be one of the bad qualities of a market.
You've completely missed the other part of the effect: yes, raising prices
lowers demand. BUT IT ALSO RAISES SUPPLY! You actually get more items made,
when the price for the item goes higher. _That's_ the beauty of free markets.
Also, you remain confused that only wealthy people purchase more expensive
items. As the price goes up, the people who wind up buying it are generally
those for whom the item has more value. (You're confused about this, because
you've convinced yourself in error that the value of an item must be related
to it manufacture, in particular the labor hours that went in to it. In
reality, the value of an item is about the utility that the purchaser gains
when acquiring it.)
Yes, rich people can afford more things, and are willing to pay more for
less value. But a poor person, who receives more value than most from a
given item, is willing to pay a higher price, even if he has less assets than
the rich person.
You need to understand that individuals can have very, very different utilities
for the exact same item.
>> Take services. How, in your economy, do you decide how much to charge for
>> an hour of a doctor's time, vs. an hour of burger flipper's time?
>>
> I don't think an average MD should earn any different rate than an
> average burger flipper.
You aren't allowing wages to vary because of the quality/fun of the job, or
because of the training required, etc. Given your new approach, the problem
is simply that no individuals (aside from a few crazy folks) are going to
choose to begin medical training. There's no personal (economic) benefit to
it.
> In my society investment costs of education are absorbed by the system so
> it's not like a qualified MD has any claim that they should be repayed for
> their investment in education.
You've neglected the opportunity cost of their years of training. They could
have been earning a salary during that time. And having a lot more fun,
being a lifeguard on the beach and drinking tequilas. But instead, they spent
4-10 years studying difficult books and working on-call overnight. Not fun.
> In the end, an MD is still putting hours of labour in like a burger flipper
> is. They should be rewarded according to their productivity in their task,
> not according to their societal rank.
That's a fine theory.
Now, how does your society deal with the fact that you have the same number
of sick/trauma patients as any other society, but you've trained no doctors
to treat them?
How do you get enough doctors to meet the demand? Everybody wants to use a
doctor, but nobody wants to be one.
> Crap MDs are almost always MDs who are soley in it for the money.
A claim you make with zero evidence. You're almost certainly wrong.
I know this wish supports your theory, but you should stick to factoids
that you can verify.
> By the way, argument by analogy only works when the subject and object of
> the analogy are sufficiently similar to draw convincing parallels. You're
> wasting your time trying to pretend that my system will be anything like
> Russia.
Those analogies came because you confused everyone by initially claiming you
were going to fix the price of items in every market (using your labor-hour-
manufacturing formula). In your latest post, you seem no longer to claim
this. So sure, the communist analogies no longer hold. But you were the
one who misled us originally.
> What you're arguing only makes sense in a restricted market where someone's
> fixed prices too low. And what exactly is this about the price being
> "agreed on"? Labour price is simply a static value given to average
> productivity in my system. It doesn't even matter what that value is since
> it's the same for everyone and is the only value which affects prices.
Then every once in awhile you write something like this, which sure SOUNDS
like you want to set the price of items (to the formula which uses the
number of labor hours). But then elsewhere you say you're willing to let
prices vary by supply and demand.
I'm really not sure what you want. Are prices fixed by your formula, or do
they vary? If fixed, you have scarcity problems. If they vary, then I don't
understand why you ever wrote down that formula. Is it just supposed to be
your theory of what the "value" of an item is, but it doesn't affect anything
in the economy because prices don't need to be set at that value? Why did
you tell us of your magic formula?
> If there's a scarcity of toilet papers, consumers need to adjust their
> consumption habits or find an alternative
> Since the problem is that only one guy wants to make toilet
> paper, then perhaps investment into researching how to increase toilet
> paper production through machinery needs to be discussed or researching how
> to decrease the unpleasantness of the task of creating toilet paper so more
> people are willing to do the job.
Or, as happens in capitalist economies, raise the wage of a toilet-paper-maker,
and suddenly you'll find a lot more people interested in being one.
But you are definitely fixing wages in your economy (and in fact, fixing them
all to be identical), so you don't have this option.
> There's no need for a state to enforce the rules. All it needs is a bunch
> of people willing to work together to make it happen. In my system if
> other people want their market economy then they can have it
Ah, so maybe every item has two markets: the fixed-price market, and the
floating-price free market.
You'll quickly find that there are zero items available in every fixed-price
market, and _all_ of your societies commerce will take place in the
floating-price free market.
> so long as they're not exploiting labour through interest or rent or
> participating in other forms of coercion.
Interesting the way you use words like coercion. If one person happens to
own some assets (like money), and a second person has a possible business
opportunity, then if interest were allowed they could make an exchange,
and the new business would be launched, and society would now have an exciting
new item, and the original asset owner would eventually be paid back, with
interest. Everybody in the story is happy.
But you prohibit this exchange. So you must use governmental force (outlawing
interest, imprisoning people who violate your laws) to prevent the contract
in the previous paragraph. And, as a result, the guy with the money chooses
not to lend it to the guy with the opportunity. And thus, in your society,
no new business gets started.
I don't see how this makes anything better, but presumably you like it for
some reason.
I do find it odd, though, that you call first scenario, where everybody is
happy, "coercion".
>> Black markets don't fix scarcity problems in capitalist societies. Prices
>> rise so that demand drops to the level of what can be supplied in the
>> short term. That's how capitalist allocation comes back into balance.
>
> Oh? So why are there black markets in capitalist societies if not to
> fulfill demand by supplying goods and services that would otherwise be
> scarce?
There aren't many black markets at all in capitalist societies. There are
some when the item itself is prohibited for moral reasons (drugs,
prostitution). People are willing to pay for them anyway, so that makes
a black market. Secondly, you sometimes get secondary markets to avoid
taxes, such as with immigrant farm labor, or perhaps nanny child care.
But for ordinary items, with low taxes? No black markets, and also no
scarcity. Bananas, razor blades, PCs, toilet paper. Capitalist economies
have neither black markets nor (long-term) shortages of these things.
>>> You also forgot to mention problems of unemployment, labour exploitation,
>>> and irrational inequalities of wealth and power to name a few.
>>
>> It's a matter of great debate whether those are even problems to be fixed.
>> It's far from obvious that anything needs to be changed on those topics.
>
> I'm tempted to see how on earth you could possibly debate that they aren't
> problems. But if you're that blind to your own system's problems that's
> obviously going to be too long, tiring and fruitless a tangent.
You misunderstand. I'm not blind. I'm fully aware of what the facts are.
The disagreement is whether the facts are a problem for society, and whether
society would be improved by forcibly altering the facts.
1. A low level of unemployment provide grease for the economy, offering a
pool of available labor to exploit the next opportunity. Zero unemployment
is not a goal.
2. Labor "exploitation" is a phrase that sounds bad, but doesn't actually
refer to anything objective. Describe a specific situation, and we can
discuss whether the situation is unfair in some way.
3. "Inequalities of wealth (and power)" surely exist. But "irrational"
isn't a phrase that means anything in connection with them. Ignoring the
meaningless word you threw in there to make it sound bad, yes the inequalities
exist. Why are they bad?
For a positive view, consider: not all humans are identical. Some have more
potential than others. Some are more productive than others. Wealth is a
prize, that "fools" people into working harder than they otherwise would,
which benefits society. (Society gains much more value than the wealth that
the individual accumulates.) Thus: inequality of wealth outcomes is a sign
that you're getting the most from your most productive citizens. A good thing.
> It doesn't matter how they get wealthy, what matters is that it's only
> wealthy people and people sponsored by wealthy people who rule the US and
> most countries who ruled by representatives. And that *is* how US
> elections work. So what if many people who attempt to buy their way into
> office don't make it? What matters is that all the ones who get into
> office are the few remaining people who attempted to buy their way into
> office.
I'm saying that they in fact didn't buy their way into office. Instead, they
got into office because they offered what the general population wanted.
Then, because they were electable to the ordinary public, as a _consequence_,
money and wealth flowed to them.
Being rich isn't what made them electable. They were electable because
ordinary people liked them. Being electable is what made them rich.
> Who said that's what tyranny of the majority was? That wasn't my point. My
> point was a simple statistical proof that minority rule leads to tyranny
> more often worse than majority rule. As such full democracy is superior in
> preventing tyranny than any form of rule by minority and "Tyranny of the
> majority" is the least evil.
We're talking cross purposes here. I don't even deny that rule by a small
group is probably worse in some ways than rule by the full public. That
isn't the concern.
The concern is whether a 51% "majority vote" should allow any outcome, and
provide absolute power to the winning side. The contrasting side suggests
a concept of "rights", which the group is not permitted to violate, EVEN IF
they get a 51% majority.
For example, the US congress can't decide to throw you in jail, even if
they get 51% of the representatives to want to do so and vote to do so.
That isn't one of their allowed powers.
"Tyranny of the majority" means that even if 51% of the people want to do
something, that doesn't necessarily mean that a good society will let it be
done. (You're throwing in a different, unrelated, concern, which is
representative vs. "full" democracy. I've made no comment on that topic.)
If you look at the US, the more and more important things require much
greater support (leading to some of your "consensus" ideas!) than a simple
majority. Some things require a 2/3 "supermajority". Some things require
both the President and Congress. Some things require a majority or 2/3 of
the states, in addition to a vote in the Congress.
"Majority rules" is only good for minor topics that don't matter much to
society.
> What, you think it's EASIER to convince 51% of the total population to do
> something evil than it is to convince a small group of people much smaller
> than 51% of the total population?
You've misunderstood my concern. It's far too easy to convince 51% of any
group, whether large or small, to do evil things. You need a stronger
political mechanism to prevent many evils than that.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a
warning to others. -- Despair.com
Don Geddis wrote:
>Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Sun, 08 May 2005:
>
>
>>I'm simply recognising that the only way to add value to something is with
>>labour
>>
>>
>
>That's not true. A whole package of things is required to add value to
>something, and labor is generally (but not necessarily always) part of that
>package. But that's a different statement.
>
>In any case, it doesn't matter whether we agree on this point, because your
>conclusion doesn't follow.
>
>
>
>>and consequently the value of any good or service is equivalent to the
>>amount of labour put into it.
>>
>>
>
>No, that is not a consequent. Even if your antecedent were true.
>
>I know you _wish_ it was true, and you're trying to design an economy/society
>that forces it to be true, but it isn't logically true. In capitalist
>economies, for example the value of a good or service is determined by those
>who use/purchase it, and has very little to do with the amount of human labor
>involved in its manufacturing.
>
>And utility will continue to be determined that way, even if you fix prices
>using your formula (which is based on labor hours). That may fix prices, but
>it won't change true utility/value, which is always in the eye of the beholder
>and generally somewhat different for each individual.
>
>
>
>>>We all assumed that "price-of-labour" was a constant for your society. You
>>>want it to vary? By industry? By individual?
>>>
>>>
>>Price-of-labour is the value of one hour of an average worker's labour and
>>is a constant. [...] No, I don't
>>think it needs to change according to industry.
>>
>>
>
>OK, now your new economy is going to have huge labor shortages. Since you're
>planning on paying everybody the same hourly wage, regardless of the work,
>then everyone will flock to the easy/fun jobs, and nobody will be willing to
>do the difficult/demanding/unpleasant work in society. Or work that requires
>significant (or unpleasant) training. After all, there is nothing to be
>gained personally!
>
>So you'll have tons of lifeguards on the beachs, but no garbage men, and
>nobody to clean and repair the sewers, and no electricians, and no doctors.
>
>While your society will suffer mightily, no individual will make a different
>choice, because wages of the much worse job are fixed by you to be the same
>as the much more pleasant jobs.
>
>How do you propose to solve this new problem, that there are no employees
>available for hire (at the fixed wages) for all the bad jobs?
>
>
>
>>Investments such as R&D need popular support before they're taken on. Such
>>an investment would need to be proposed with projected budgets etc by an
>>interested group of individuals who see the need
>>
>>
>
>Where does the money come from to put into such R&D budgets? What is the
>source of the money?
>
>
>
>>just as a group of individuals seeking a grant might do now.
>>
>>
>
>The interesting R&D that I was talking about, in our current society, is
>funded by investors who are looking for a return on their investment, in order
>to balance the significant risk that the effort might fail.
>
>You have outlawed interest/rents in your society. Why would anyone donate
>money to such an R&D effort?
>
>
>
>>The source of this labour would come from banks similar to what we have now
>>but would differ in that they would not participate in any form of
>>interest.
>>
>>
>
>Where do the banks get the money, in your society?
>
>In our current society, they only have money available because they promise
>interest to the people/organizations that have the money to begin with.
>
>You don't allow interest. Why would your banks have any money available to
>lend out? And, in fact, why would they bother to be banks in the first place,
>since even if they had money you aren't allowing them to earn a profit with
>it? It would seem that banks couldn't exist, since they can't borrow money
>from anyone, and they can earn a living with it even if they had it.
>
>You seem to have a big missing whole in your theory, which is how to account
>for doing R&D.
>
>
>
>>in my view I see them all capable of coexisting and cooperating with
>>eachother. Essentially, the market I mentioned is the "Black Market"
>>mentioned by you and other people. Only it's not something illegal so
>>"Black Market" is a useless term. Such a marke t would be people who aren't
>>really interested in the particular layout I have in mind and would rather
>>continue to use a market. And as I've said, there's no reason to stop them
>>
>>
>
>OK, although this seems _very_ different from what you proposed in your
>earlier messages. Now it looks like you're happy to let prices float to
>the supply/demand intersection point. You're right that this will solve the
>problem of shortages.
>
>But you misled us by writing that formula so many times, claiming to set the
>cost of an item for sale. In fact, you don't care about that price after all.
>
>It now seems that your big concern is merely fixing labor wages (and outlawing
>ownership/interest/rents). That's got different problems (which I outlined
>above). The reason you got the responses you did in the past (from myself as
>well as others) is because you were far from clear in what you cared about.
>
>So: you don't care about fixing market prices, and you're happy to have
>free market prices. OK, fine.
>
>
>
>>What I said was markets that don't have huge gaps between rich or poor are
>>less likely to result in excessively rich people who go about denying poor
>>people of access to scarce resources by out-purchasing them.
>>
>>
>
>You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Very few items
>are scarce resources just because rich people outbuy poor people.
>Bill Gates and/or Larry Ellison could presumably purchase all the hamburgers
>that McDonald's makes in a year, but somehow I'm still able to go to my
>local franchise and pick one up for a dollar.
>
>The gap between the rich and the poor has very little to do with what the
>poor are able to purchase. If there were fewer rich people, the poor would
>not suddenly have the ability to buy more stuff.
>
>
>
>>>The problem you're not fixing, is the one when a supplier simply chooses
>>>not to make any more items. People want a lot more, but nobody has an
>>>incentive to make one.
>>>
>>>
>>How's that worse than an item getting taken off the market in the current
>>system for the same reasons? It's not a problem unique to any system; it
>>doesn't matter what system you use, if people aren't producing an item
>>then nobody's going to be able to consume it.
>>
>>
>
>This discussion was all when you misled us by your talk of fixing prices.
>That's what leads to the scarcity. You now seem to have changed your mind,
>and no longer care about fixing prices.
>
>With floating prices, such scarcity disappears because the price rises,
>and suddenly the supplier is much more interested in making more items.
>
>
>
>>Or if what you mean is not that nobody is making any of the items, but
>>that less people are making the items then the solution to that's no
>>different to the ones I've already described. It basically would require
>>rationing. The market's no different, by raising prices to lower demand
>>it's just rationing in a manner that favours people who are wealthy enough
>>to afford the new prices. Personally, I consider such discrimination
>>against the underprivileged to be one of the bad qualities of a market.
>>
>>
>
>You've completely missed the other part of the effect: yes, raising prices
>lowers demand. BUT IT ALSO RAISES SUPPLY! You actually get more items made,
>when the price for the item goes higher. _That's_ the beauty of free markets.
>
>Also, you remain confused that only wealthy people purchase more expensive
>items. As the price goes up, the people who wind up buying it are generally
>those for whom the item has more value. (You're confused about this, because
>you've convinced yourself in error that the value of an item must be related
>to it manufacture, in particular the labor hours that went in to it. In
>reality, the value of an item is about the utility that the purchaser gains
>when acquiring it.)
>
>Yes, rich people can afford more things, and are willing to pay more for
>less value. But a poor person, who receives more value than most from a
>given item, is willing to pay a higher price, even if he has less assets than
>the rich person.
>
>You need to understand that individuals can have very, very different utilities
>for the exact same item.
>
>
>
>>>Take services. How, in your economy, do you decide how much to charge for
>>>an hour of a doctor's time, vs. an hour of burger flipper's time?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I don't think an average MD should earn any different rate than an
>>average burger flipper.
>>
>>
>
>You aren't allowing wages to vary because of the quality/fun of the job, or
>because of the training required, etc. Given your new approach, the problem
>is simply that no individuals (aside from a few crazy folks) are going to
>choose to begin medical training. There's no personal (economic) benefit to
>it.
>
>
>
>>In my society investment costs of education are absorbed by the system so
>>it's not like a qualified MD has any claim that they should be repayed for
>>their investment in education.
>>
>>
>
>You've neglected the opportunity cost of their years of training. They could
>have been earning a salary during that time. And having a lot more fun,
>being a lifeguard on the beach and drinking tequilas. But instead, they spent
>4-10 years studying difficult books and working on-call overnight. Not fun.
>
>
>
>>In the end, an MD is still putting hours of labour in like a burger flipper
>>is. They should be rewarded according to their productivity in their task,
>>not according to their societal rank.
>>
>>
>
>That's a fine theory.
>
>Now, how does your society deal with the fact that you have the same number
>of sick/trauma patients as any other society, but you've trained no doctors
>to treat them?
>
>How do you get enough doctors to meet the demand? Everybody wants to use a
>doctor, but nobody wants to be one.
>
>
>
>>Crap MDs are almost always MDs who are soley in it for the money.
>>
>>
>
>A claim you make with zero evidence. You're almost certainly wrong.
>I know this wish supports your theory, but you should stick to factoids
>that you can verify.
>
>
>
>>By the way, argument by analogy only works when the subject and object of
>>the analogy are sufficiently similar to draw convincing parallels. You're
>>wasting your time trying to pretend that my system will be anything like
>>Russia.
>>
>>
>
>Those analogies came because you confused everyone by initially claiming you
>were going to fix the price of items in every market (using your labor-hour-
>manufacturing formula). In your latest post, you seem no longer to claim
>this. So sure, the communist analogies no longer hold. But you were the
>one who misled us originally.
>
>
>
>>What you're arguing only makes sense in a restricted market where someone's
>>fixed prices too low. And what exactly is this about the price being
>>"agreed on"? Labour price is simply a static value given to average
>>productivity in my system. It doesn't even matter what that value is since
>>it's the same for everyone and is the only value which affects prices.
>>
>>
>
>Then every once in awhile you write something like this, which sure SOUNDS
>like you want to set the price of items (to the formula which uses the
>number of labor hours). But then elsewhere you say you're willing to let
>prices vary by supply and demand.
>
>I'm really not sure what you want. Are prices fixed by your formula, or do
>they vary? If fixed, you have scarcity problems. If they vary, then I don't
>understand why you ever wrote down that formula. Is it just supposed to be
>your theory of what the "value" of an item is, but it doesn't affect anything
>in the economy because prices don't need to be set at that value? Why did
>you tell us of your magic formula?
>
>
>
>>If there's a scarcity of toilet papers, consumers need to adjust their
>>consumption habits or find an alternative
>>Since the problem is that only one guy wants to make toilet
>>paper, then perhaps investment into researching how to increase toilet
>>paper production through machinery needs to be discussed or researching how
>>to decrease the unpleasantness of the task of creating toilet paper so more
>>people are willing to do the job.
>>
>>
>
>Or, as happens in capitalist economies, raise the wage of a toilet-paper-maker,
>and suddenly you'll find a lot more people interested in being one.
>
>But you are definitely fixing wages in your economy (and in fact, fixing them
>all to be identical), so you don't have this option.
>
>
>
>>There's no need for a state to enforce the rules. All it needs is a bunch
>>of people willing to work together to make it happen. In my system if
>>other people want their market economy then they can have it
>>
>>
>
>Ah, so maybe every item has two markets: the fixed-price market, and the
>floating-price free market.
>
>You'll quickly find that there are zero items available in every fixed-price
>market, and _all_ of your societies commerce will take place in the
>floating-price free market.
>
>
>
>>so long as they're not exploiting labour through interest or rent or
>>participating in other forms of coercion.
>>
>>
>
>Interesting the way you use words like coercion. If one person happens to
>own some assets (like money), and a second person has a possible business
>opportunity, then if interest were allowed they could make an exchange,
>and the new business would be launched, and society would now have an exciting
>new item, and the original asset owner would eventually be paid back, with
>interest. Everybody in the story is happy.
>
>But you prohibit this exchange. So you must use governmental force (outlawing
>interest, imprisoning people who violate your laws) to prevent the contract
>in the previous paragraph. And, as a result, the guy with the money chooses
>not to lend it to the guy with the opportunity. And thus, in your society,
>no new business gets started.
>
>I don't see how this makes anything better, but presumably you like it for
>some reason.
>
>I do find it odd, though, that you call first scenario, where everybody is
>happy, "coercion".
>
>
>
>>>Black markets don't fix scarcity problems in capitalist societies. Prices
>>>rise so that demand drops to the level of what can be supplied in the
>>>short term. That's how capitalist allocation comes back into balance.
>>>
>>>
>>Oh? So why are there black markets in capitalist societies if not to
>>fulfill demand by supplying goods and services that would otherwise be
>>scarce?
>>
>>
>
>There aren't many black markets at all in capitalist societies. There are
>some when the item itself is prohibited for moral reasons (drugs,
>prostitution). People are willing to pay for them anyway, so that makes
>a black market. Secondly, you sometimes get secondary markets to avoid
>taxes, such as with immigrant farm labor, or perhaps nanny child care.
>
>But for ordinary items, with low taxes? No black markets, and also no
>scarcity. Bananas, razor blades, PCs, toilet paper. Capitalist economies
>have neither black markets nor (long-term) shortages of these things.
>
>
>
>>>>You also forgot to mention problems of unemployment, labour exploitation,
>>>>and irrational inequalities of wealth and power to name a few.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>It's a matter of great debate whether those are even problems to be fixed.
>>>It's far from obvious that anything needs to be changed on those topics.
>>>
>>>
>>I'm tempted to see how on earth you could possibly debate that they aren't
>>problems. But if you're that blind to your own system's problems that's
>>obviously going to be too long, tiring and fruitless a tangent.
>>
>>
>
>You misunderstand. I'm not blind. I'm fully aware of what the facts are.
>The disagreement is whether the facts are a problem for society, and whether
>society would be improved by forcibly altering the facts.
>
>1. A low level of unemployment provide grease for the economy, offering a
>pool of available labor to exploit the next opportunity. Zero unemployment
>is not a goal.
>
>2. Labor "exploitation" is a phrase that sounds bad, but doesn't actually
>refer to anything objective. Describe a specific situation, and we can
>discuss whether the situation is unfair in some way.
>
>3. "Inequalities of wealth (and power)" surely exist. But "irrational"
>isn't a phrase that means anything in connection with them. Ignoring the
>meaningless word you threw in there to make it sound bad, yes the inequalities
>exist. Why are they bad?
>
>For a positive view, consider: not all humans are identical. Some have more
>potential than others. Some are more productive than others. Wealth is a
>prize, that "fools" people into working harder than they otherwise would,
>which benefits society. (Society gains much more value than the wealth that
>the individual accumulates.) Thus: inequality of wealth outcomes is a sign
>that you're getting the most from your most productive citizens. A good thing.
>
>
>
>>It doesn't matter how they get wealthy, what matters is that it's only
>>wealthy people and people sponsored by wealthy people who rule the US and
>>most countries who ruled by representatives. And that *is* how US
>>elections work. So what if many people who attempt to buy their way into
>>office don't make it? What matters is that all the ones who get into
>>office are the few remaining people who attempted to buy their way into
>>office.
>>
>>
>
>I'm saying that they in fact didn't buy their way into office. Instead, they
>got into office because they offered what the general population wanted.
>Then, because they were electable to the ordinary public, as a _consequence_,
>money and wealth flowed to them.
>
>Being rich isn't what made them electable. They were electable because
>ordinary people liked them. Being electable is what made them rich.
>
>
>
>>Who said that's what tyranny of the majority was? That wasn't my point. My
>>point was a simple statistical proof that minority rule leads to tyranny
>>more often worse than majority rule. As such full democracy is superior in
>>preventing tyranny than any form of rule by minority and "Tyranny of the
>>majority" is the least evil.
>>
>>
>
>We're talking cross purposes here. I don't even deny that rule by a small
>group is probably worse in some ways than rule by the full public. That
>isn't the concern.
>
>The concern is whether a 51% "majority vote" should allow any outcome, and
>provide absolute power to the winning side. The contrasting side suggests
>a concept of "rights", which the group is not permitted to violate, EVEN IF
>they get a 51% majority.
>
>For example, the US congress can't decide to throw you in jail, even if
>they get 51% of the representatives to want to do so and vote to do so.
>That isn't one of their allowed powers.
>
>"Tyranny of the majority" means that even if 51% of the people want to do
>something, that doesn't necessarily mean that a good society will let it be
>done. (You're throwing in a different, unrelated, concern, which is
>representative vs. "full" democracy. I've made no comment on that topic.)
>
>If you look at the US, the more and more important things require much
>greater support (leading to some of your "consensus" ideas!) than a simple
>majority. Some things require a 2/3 "supermajority". Some things require
>both the President and Congress. Some things require a majority or 2/3 of
>the states, in addition to a vote in the Congress.
>
>"Majority rules" is only good for minor topics that don't matter much to
>society.
>
>
>
>>What, you think it's EASIER to convince 51% of the total population to do
>>something evil than it is to convince a small group of people much smaller
>>than 51% of the total population?
>>
>>
>
>You've misunderstood my concern. It's far too easy to convince 51% of any
>group, whether large or small, to do evil things. You need a stronger
>political mechanism to prevent many evils than that.
>
> -- Don
>_______________________________________________________________________________
>Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
>Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a
>warning to others. -- Despair.com
>
>
A delusional socialist, I have seen up close and personal the effects of
these dreamers when they get in power, total tyrany.
On Sat, 07 May 2005 23:33:39 -0700, Don Geddis wrote:
> Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Sun, 08 May 2005:
> That's not true. A whole package of things is required to add value to
> something, and labor is generally (but not necessarily always) part of
> that package. But that's a different statement.
You keep claiming this and yet you've still failed to provide one thing
that adds value to an item.
>> and consequently the value of any good or service is equivalent to the
>> amount of labour put into it.
>
> No, that is not a consequent. Even if your antecedent were true.
>
> I know you _wish_ it was true, and you're trying to design an
> economy/society that forces it to be true, but it isn't logically true.
> In capitalist economies, for example the value of a good or service is
> determined by those who use/purchase it, and has very little to do with
> the amount of human labor involved in its manufacturing.
Just because that's how capitalism works doesn't mean it's the best.
That's circular reasoning.
> And utility will continue to be determined that way, even if you fix
> prices using your formula (which is based on labor hours). That may fix
> prices, but it won't change true utility/value, which is always in the eye
> of the beholder and generally somewhat different for each individual.
Just because the most popular current economic theory is the subjective
theory of value doesn't mean it's true. Again, that's circular reasoning.
For instance, try to explain how a new item's price is set using
subjective value. The price is set before demand is even known. Supply and
demand fails to explain anything more than fluctuations in price, not the
price they tend to.
>> Price-of-labour is the value of one hour of an average worker's labour
>> and is a constant. [...] No, I don't
>> think it needs to change according to industry.
>
> OK, now your new economy is going to have huge labor shortages. Since
> you're planning on paying everybody the same hourly wage, regardless of
> the work, then everyone will flock to the easy/fun jobs, and nobody will
> be willing to do the difficult/demanding/unpleasant work in society. Or
> work that requires significant (or unpleasant) training. After all, there
> is nothing to be gained personally!
There's always the problem of who's going to have to do the unpleasant
work.
In capitalism, the solution is fixed by giving the job to underprivileged,
desperate people who can't get employment elsewhere. It fixes the problem
but it's an exploitative solution.
There are more humane alternatives. Such as sharing unpleasant work among
the general population are available. That particular solution has the
advantage of fairness; if everyone contributes to the mess, everyone
should contribute to cleaning it up.
>> Investments such as R&D need popular support before they're taken on.
>> Such an investment would need to be proposed with projected budgets etc
>> by an interested group of individuals who see the need
>
> Where does the money come from to put into such R&D budgets? What is the
> source of the money?
Already answered this. Banks. You even asked a question about it below.
>> just as a group of individuals seeking a grant might do now.
>
> The interesting R&D that I was talking about, in our current society, is
> funded by investors who are looking for a return on their investment, in
> order to balance the significant risk that the effort might fail.
>
> You have outlawed interest/rents in your society. Why would anyone donate
> money to such an R&D effort?
Because society wants the returns for their investment of labour into R&D.
Why would people refuse societal progress just because they can't charge
interest from labour for it? They get their rewards from the societal
outcomes of the R&D itself.
>> The source of this labour would come from banks similar to what we have
>> now but would differ in that they would not participate in any form of
>> interest.
>
> Where do the banks get the money, in your society?
People get paid into their bank accounts. Surplus unused wealth stored in
the bank can be used to fund investments. Same way banks work now minus
interest.
> In our current society, they only have money available because they
> promise interest to the people/organizations that have the money to begin
> with.
Rubbish. Most of the people I know have bank accounts because it's a
convenient place to store money and their employers will only pay them
into a bank account. Interest earned from putting money into banks is
usually either 0 or barely covers the fees the banks charge. If you put
your money into your bank because you hope to get wealthy off it you're
fooling yourself.
> You don't allow interest. Why would your banks have any money available
> to lend out? And, in fact, why would they bother to be banks in the first
> place, since even if they had money you aren't allowing them to earn a
> profit with it? It would seem that banks couldn't exist, since they can't
> borrow money from anyone, and they can earn a living with it even if they
> had it.
Such banks needn't be profit engines. Society would fund the costs of
having a bank out of the necessity of having one. Just like anything else
people just do because they need it done. Capitalists see the price in
everything and the value in nothing. Do you eat and breathe and eat out of
expectation that you expect to get paid a profit simply for it?
>> in my view I see them all capable of coexisting and cooperating with
>> eachother. Essentially, the market I mentioned is the "Black Market"
>> mentioned by you and other people. Only it's not something illegal so
>> "Black Market" is a useless term. Such a marke t would be people who
>> aren't really interested in the particular layout I have in mind and
>> would rather continue to use a market. And as I've said, there's no
>> reason to stop them
>
> OK, although this seems _very_ different from what you proposed in your
> earlier messages. Now it looks like you're happy to let prices float to
> the supply/demand intersection point. You're right that this will solve
> the problem of shortages.
No it's not. I'm still advocating a different idea from a market. I'm
simply saying there's no need to go out and declare war on anyone who
chooses to continue to operate by market principles. A market has nothing
to do with what I propose other than I was clarifying that it can coexist
when working upon the same principles of zero coercion.
>> What I said was markets that don't have huge gaps between rich or poor
>> are less likely to result in excessively rich people who go about
>> denying poor people of access to scarce resources by out-purchasing
>> them.
>
> You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Very few items are
> scarce resources just because rich people outbuy poor people. Bill Gates
> and/or Larry Ellison could presumably purchase all the hamburgers that
> McDonald's makes in a year, but somehow I'm still able to go to my local
> franchise and pick one up for a dollar.
Hamburgers are a ridiculous example because they simply aren't that
scarce. But if something like drinkable water became such a scarce
resource that it demanded high prices and there weren't enough of it to
go around, rich people would quickly be able to buy out remaining stocks
to secure their own survival while poorer people would be left to die.
> The gap between the rich and the poor has very little to do with what the
> poor are able to purchase. If there were fewer rich people, the poor
> would not suddenly have the ability to buy more stuff.
In the case of scarce resources, of course they would. Excessively rich
people implies that there is available demand at excessively high prices
which are out of the reach of poor people. Without those rich people a
scarce resource's price would have to drop to be purchasable by anyone and
would consequently be more accessible to people of lower purchasing power.
With everyone hovering around similar levels of purchasing power those
scarce resources become available to everyone until they run out
completely.
>> How's that worse than an item getting taken off the market in the
>> current system for the same reasons? It's not a problem unique to any
>> system; it doesn't matter what system you use, if people aren't
>> producing an item then nobody's going to be able to consume it.
> With floating prices, such scarcity disappears because the price rises,
> and suddenly the supplier is much more interested in making more items.
Floating prices does not fix scarcity due to products ceasing
production. No production means nobody can purchase it. A product which
doesn't exist can have no price.
> You've completely missed the other part of the effect: yes, raising prices
> lowers demand. BUT IT ALSO RAISES SUPPLY! You actually get more items
> made, when the price for the item goes higher. _That's_ the beauty of
> free markets.
Wrong. We're talking about scarce resources which by definition means
supply has little room to move no matter how high prices reach. For such
an item in high demand a market will push prices high in such a way that
the item is rationed according to who can afford it. Supply and demand in
theoretical economics are represented by _curves_ not straight lines.
> Also, you remain confused that only wealthy people purchase more expensive
> items. As the price goes up, the people who wind up buying it are
> generally those for whom the item has more value. (You're confused about
> this, because you've convinced yourself in error that the value of an item
> must be related to it manufacture, in particular the labor hours that went
> in to it. In reality, the value of an item is about the utility that the
> purchaser gains when acquiring it.)
I've not convinced myself in error. I'm looking at it from a different
angle. I'm looking at the value from the angle of production (labour
theory of value). You're looking at it from the angle of what people are
willing to pay for it (subjective theory of value), and assuming
incorrectly (as contemporary economists tends to do) that prices are
magically divined soley by market forces. Prices in a market fluctuate
according to supply and demand, yes, but in any system the value of a
product necessarily depends upon the value of the labour put into
manufacturing it.
You have a very poor grasp of reality if you think that someone who does
not have the purchasing power to buy a product simply doesn't value it
enough to buy it. That's very naive. $2 does not buy a $500 item no matter
how much I might value it.
> Yes, rich people can afford more things, and are willing to pay more for
> less value. But a poor person, who receives more value than most from a
> given item, is willing to pay a higher price, even if he has less assets
> than the rich person.
Yes, but a poor person has greater need to use his/her purchasing power
as economically as possible to maximise their consumer satisfaction.
Willingly paying higher prices where the opportunity cost to themselves is
far more than proportional and potentially involves foregoing necessities
is ridiculous. Perhaps you don't understand what being poor is really like.
> You need to understand that individuals can have very, very different
> utilities for the exact same item.
I understand that completely. What I'm saying is that doesn't determine an
item's objective value. It merely determines the value the object has to
individuals. That value can cause a fluctuation in demand which may be
responded to by a fluctuation in supply and/or price, but ultimately an
item's value tends toward its objective value which is determined by how
much direct and indirect labour it costs to produce.
>> I don't think an average MD should earn any different rate than an
>> average burger flipper.
>
> You aren't allowing wages to vary because of the quality/fun of the job,
> or because of the training required, etc. Given your new approach, the
> problem is simply that no individuals (aside from a few crazy folks) are
> going to choose to begin medical training. There's no personal (economic)
> benefit to it.
Why do you think people need to be crazy to want to do medical training?
What makes it more unpleasant than say programming? I know many MDs enjoy
being a MD simply for the personal fulfillment they get from it.
Assuming you're employed, if you're only doing your job because of the
level of monetary reward it gives you and not because you find it
personally fulfilling then you're in the wrong job and are doomed to be
miserable until you find a job which does give you a rewarding experience.
>> In my society investment costs of education are absorbed by the system
>> so it's not like a qualified MD has any claim that they should be
>> repayed for their investment in education.
>
> You've neglected the opportunity cost of their years of training. They
> could have been earning a salary during that time. And having a lot more
> fun, being a lifeguard on the beach and drinking tequilas. But instead,
> they spent 4-10 years studying difficult books and working on-call
> overnight. Not fun.
No I haven't neglected that. As I said, they request investment into
their education. That investment includes the cost of their course as well
as the cost of their labour put into increasing their medical skills.
> How do you get enough doctors to meet the demand? Everybody wants to use
> a doctor, but nobody wants to be one.
Rubbish. Many people want to be doctors and not just for the monetary
reward. Also, there's no shortage of labour supply in a system which has
no unemployment and reallocates resources to areas in demand. If everyone
entering the workforce requires employment to live in the society, they're
going to need to pick employment which is in demand for more labour since
there's no room where labour's already saturated.
>> There's no need for a state to enforce the rules. All it needs is a
>> bunch of people willing to work together to make it happen. In my
>> system if other people want their market economy then they can have it
>
> Ah, so maybe every item has two markets: the fixed-price market, and the
> floating-price free market.
>
> You'll quickly find that there are zero items available in every
> fixed-price market, and _all_ of your societies commerce will take place
> in the floating-price free market.
You make this claim on the invalid assumption that a floating-price, free
market is superior and everyone would prefer it. I'd prefer to let people
themselves decide. If you're right and they do prefer it, so be it. But
given many people voluntarily choose to operate on principles of equality
when the option is available (ie in most situations outside of the
workplace, and even a number of workplaces) I'd contend that you're false
and the reason markets are so popular right now is because of state
sponsorship and barriers put up against alternatives.
>> so long as they're not exploiting labour through interest or rent or
>> participating in other forms of coercion.
>
> Interesting the way you use words like coercion. If one person happens
> to own some assets (like money), and a second person has a possible
> business opportunity, then if interest were allowed they could make an
> exchange, and the new business would be launched, and society would now
> have an exciting new item, and the original asset owner would eventually
> be paid back, with interest. Everybody in the story is happy.
Why should the original asset owner be paid back more than what they
lend? When I'm not using my drill and my neighbour asks if he can use it
then I don't expect him to hand me anything back additionally when he
returns it (unless he's damaged it and made it inferior to what it was
when I lent it). I'm not using the drill anyway so it's at no cost to me -
why shouldn't he be able to use it?
In my system the story's even simpler. The workers own their capital to
begin with and land is owned in common. Any additional investment is
handled by people collectively deciding the investment is needed and
simply doing it.
You're deluded in thinking that just because the current system works by
extortion it has to in every system and that for some stupid reason people
should be happy about it.
>> Oh? So why are there black markets in capitalist societies if not to
>> fulfill demand by supplying goods and services that would otherwise be
>> scarce?
>
> There aren't many black markets at all in capitalist societies. There
> are some when the item itself is prohibited for moral reasons (drugs,
> prostitution). People are willing to pay for them anyway, so that makes
> a black market. Secondly, you sometimes get secondary markets to avoid
> taxes, such as with immigrant farm labor, or perhaps nanny child care.
Right. So black markets are providing goods and services that are
artificially made to be scarce by state intervention. A black market is
then one which breaks laws on how markets should work. Given my society
has no such laws there's no black markets and thus fewer than what there
is now.
> But for ordinary items, with low taxes? No black markets, and also no
> scarcity. Bananas, razor blades, PCs, toilet paper. Capitalist
> economies have neither black markets nor (long-term) shortages of these
> things.
Yep, and there'd be no reason for those goods not to be available in my
system either. The only cases which you've provided where there might be
scarcity have exactly the same problems in capitalism with mostly inferior
solutions and no superior solutions.
>>> It's a matter of great debate whether those are even problems to be
>>> fixed. It's far from obvious that anything needs to be changed on
>>> those topics.
It's only a matter of debate because some people prefer to cover their
eyes and pretend those problems don't exist. Like a typical person in a
society rife with slavery would pretend there isn't a problem with slavery
or claim abolishing it would cause more problems than it solves without
putting any more thought into it.
>> I'm tempted to see how on earth you could possibly debate that they
>> aren't problems. But if you're that blind to your own system's problems
>> that's obviously going to be too long, tiring and fruitless a tangent.
>
> You misunderstand. I'm not blind. I'm fully aware of what the facts
> are. The disagreement is whether the facts are a problem for society,
> and whether society would be improved by forcibly altering the facts.
>
> 1. A low level of unemployment provide grease for the economy, offering
> a pool of available labor to exploit the next opportunity. Zero
> unemployment is not a goal.
Capitalism is the *only* currently known system where unemployment exists
at all. And other societies do not have / have not had any great problems
taking up new opportunities. Unemployment then is not a necessary evil.
It's just a plain evil.
> 2. Labor "exploitation" is a phrase that sounds bad, but doesn't
> actually refer to anything objective. Describe a specific situation,
> and we can discuss whether the situation is unfair in some way.
I've already described it. The very fact that all value is derived by the
efforts of labour implies labour should receive full reward for
production. But capitalism introduces via state sponsored ideas such as
rent, interest and profit whereby less than the full value of labour is
returned to labour and the rest is kept by the capitalist. This is
exploitation and labour is the object of it. Thus labour exploitation.
> 3. "Inequalities of wealth (and power)" surely exist. But "irrational"
> isn't a phrase that means anything in connection with them. Ignoring
> the meaningless word you threw in there to make it sound bad, yes the
> inequalities exist. Why are they bad?
Inequalities may exist according to inequalities in ability to produce.
But when one person earns 10000 times more than another while not being
10000 times more productive such inequality cannot be rationally
justified.
>> It doesn't matter how they get wealthy, what matters is that it's only
>> wealthy people and people sponsored by wealthy people who rule the US
>> and most countries who ruled by representatives. And that *is* how US
>> elections work. So what if many people who attempt to buy their way
>> into office don't make it? What matters is that all the ones who get
>> into office are the few remaining people who attempted to buy their way
>> into office.
>
> I'm saying that they in fact didn't buy their way into office. Instead,
> they got into office because they offered what the general population
> wanted. Then, because they were electable to the ordinary public, as a
> _consequence_, money and wealth flowed to them.
People who don't have money and wealth barely even get heard by the
general population. How are they found to be more electable?
The people who are most popular in elections are the ones who have the
funding to pay for large campaigns which successfully cast them in a
positive light to the people and get their names well known. It all comes
down to media handouts and PR.
Also, where does the wealth and money flow to them during their campaign?
The people giving that wealth must be asking something in return. They're
the people who get the most say in what policies are considered by elected
representatives since they're the ones paying the elected representatives.
>> Who said that's what tyranny of the majority was? That wasn't my point.
>> My point was a simple statistical proof that minority rule leads to
>> tyranny more often worse than majority rule. As such full democracy is
>> superior in preventing tyranny than any form of rule by minority and
>> "Tyranny of the majority" is the least evil.
>
> We're talking cross purposes here. I don't even deny that rule by a
> small group is probably worse in some ways than rule by the full public.
> That isn't the concern.
>
> The concern is whether a 51% "majority vote" should allow any outcome,
> and provide absolute power to the winning side. The contrasting side
> suggests a concept of "rights", which the group is not permitted to
> violate, EVEN IF they get a 51% majority.
>
> For example, the US congress can't decide to throw you in jail, even if
> they get 51% of the representatives to want to do so and vote to do so.
> That isn't one of their allowed powers.
Yeah, and what makes a representative system so special in that only it
can have a constitution and not a full democracy? That check has nothing
to do with whether democracy or another system is used. Furthermore, many
decisions can be made to require much greater than 51% majority. Democracy
doesn't necessarily mean having over half the vote, it can mean having
over any minimum required vote. Consensus for example is a special case of
democracy where 100% vote is the minimum requirement.
Robert Marlow wrote:
> There's always the problem of who's going to have to do the
> unpleasant work.
>
> In capitalism, the solution is fixed by giving the job to
> underprivileged, desperate people who can't get employment
> elsewhere. It fixes the problem but it's an exploitative
> solution.
>
> There are more humane alternatives. Such as sharing unpleasant work
> among the general population are available. That particular
> solution has the advantage of fairness; if everyone contributes to
> themess, everyone should contribute to cleaning it up.
As I understand, you are mainly talking about economic systems internal
to a local economy, while Don is talking about a more global one?
In our current world, corporations are structured internally as
authoritarian command economies. They efficiently allocate resources in
a centralized fashion rather than market-based, nearly always.
Externally, they operate within a state-capitalist system which
generally violates free trade (as Intel's Andy Grove happily points
out).
In the possible universe you mention, local communities would form
internally democratic+constitutional (?) economies, and may interact
with each other under some sort of market system.
Also, one important lynchpin to your ideas seems to be that people
can't benefit from the state enforcing property-monopoly-at-a-distance.
That is, someone can't live in an immaculate neighborhood while pumping
sewage into people's rivers on another coast. If you were determined to
undertake those industries, you'd have to pump sewage into your local
environment.
> >> just as a group of individuals seeking a grant might do now.
> >
> > The interesting R&D that I was talking about, in our current
> > society, is funded by investors who are looking for a return
> > on their investment, in order to balance the significant risk
> > that the effort might fail.
> >
> > You have outlawed interest/rents in your society. Why would
> > anyone donate money to such an R&D effort?
>
> Because society wants the returns for their investment of labour
> into R&D. Why would people refuse societal progress just because
> they can't charge interest from labour for it? They get their
> rewards from the societal outcomes of the R&D itself.
Right now, the state plunges beaucoup bucks in R&D, as Lisp inventor
John McCarthy explained. Noting that wages stagnated/declined despite
huge advances in tech productivity, today's fake-capitalist model is
about stealing from America's commons, apparently.
Corporations only invest in short-term R&D that is likely to have an
obvious payoff, whereas the government subsidizes the hugely expensive
fundamental research which leads to true advances, and purchases tech
that isn't yet cost-effective enough to compete in a free market. The
only corporations that may research fundamental tech are monopolists
like AT&T, whose Bell Labs stopped pursuing fundmental R&D once AT&T
was stripped of monopoly protections.
> >> The source of this labour would come from banks similar to what
> >> we have now but would differ in that they would not participate
> >> in any form of interest.
> >
> > Where do the banks get the money, in your society?
>
> People get paid into their bank accounts. Surplus unused wealth
> stored in the bank can be used to fund investments. Same way
> banks work now minus interest.
Presumably, money creation has to then be placed under different
management than bodies like the Federal Reserve and bankers? Maybe
alternative currency models are needed?
One sidenote to Robert Marlow: I won't respond anymore, because it
takes too long. If you really believe the system you describe
would work, try it out!
Nobody prevents you from gathering like-minded people and trading
for fixed prices, finance each others' MD education and other
stuff you mentioned. That's the beauty of a rather *free* system,
that other systems can exist in it, while the converse isn't true,
so that people usually evade into an illegal black market.
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Also, one important lynchpin to your ideas seems to be that people
> can't benefit from the state enforcing property-monopoly-at-a-distance.
> That is, someone can't live in an immaculate neighborhood while pumping
> sewage into people's rivers on another coast. If you were determined to
> undertake those industries, you'd have to pump sewage into your local
> environment.
Not really. Polluting peoples' property (their gardens, beaches
etc.) is a crime and should be prosecuted (unless the owners
accept money-payment instead to settle out of court).
The only reason why Intel and others can emit thousands of tons of
waste sewage in East Asia, is that there are no property rights
(of the people living there), and the government doesn't care
about pollution either.
> Right now, the state plunges beaucoup bucks in R&D, as Lisp inventor
> John McCarthy explained. Noting that wages stagnated/declined despite
> huge advances in tech productivity, today's fake-capitalist model is
> about stealing from America's commons, apparently.
>
> Corporations only invest in short-term R&D that is likely to have an
> obvious payoff, whereas the government subsidizes the hugely expensive
> fundamental research which leads to true advances, and purchases tech
> that isn't yet cost-effective enough to compete in a free market. The
> only corporations that may research fundamental tech are monopolists
> like AT&T, whose Bell Labs stopped pursuing fundmental R&D once AT&T
> was stripped of monopoly protections.
True, but if anybody (citizens maybe) would care, then they could
just as well finance research from within a non-profit
organization as is done now on decree with their tax-money. The
difference is that ultra-religious people don't have to pay taxes
for stem-cell research, while I don't have to pay for advances
that help nuclear power plants.
If nobody on earth cares for fundamental research, then those tax
dollars shouldn't be spent in the first place, obviously.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> One sidenote to Robert Marlow: I won't respond anymore, because it
> takes too long. If you really believe the system you describe
> would work, try it out!
You'd be quite surprised how many Lisp users do implement such systems.
For example, look into who hosts lisp.tech.coop. Two Lisp users there
(at least), whose words you've no doubt read.
Even one of the ALU's Grand Muftis often mentions anarchism, which is
bittersweet and ironic given the ALU's such a secretive organization.
> Nobody prevents you from gathering like-minded people and trading
> for fixed prices, finance each others' MD education and other
> stuff you mentioned. That's the beauty of a rather *free* system,
> that other systems can exist in it, while the converse isn't true,
> so that people usually evade into an illegal black market.
Not necessarily; the host government can veto many things in your
system. But all change indeed is by people who push for democratic
values.
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>
>>One sidenote to Robert Marlow: I won't respond anymore, because it
>>takes too long. If you really believe the system you describe
>>would work, try it out!
>
>
> You'd be quite surprised how many Lisp users do implement such systems.
>
> For example, look into who hosts lisp.tech.coop. Two Lisp users there
> (at least), whose words you've no doubt read.
Here:
http://www.tech.coop/About%20Us
I don't know them...
(and couldn't find other info who's responsible for lisp.tech.coop)
Also, I wouldn't say that a cooperative has *anything* to do with
Mr Marlow's posts. A cooperative is just something like a
non-profit in a capitalist system (as is the case). I never said
anything against non-profit cooperatives. In fact I think that
they are necessary, but all those anti-capitalists always say that
without heavy state intervention and forced taxation no
cooperation is possible and everybody will starve, and chaos reign
the earth... ;)
> Even one of the ALU's Grand Muftis often mentions anarchism, which is
> bittersweet and ironic given the ALU's such a secretive organization.
>
>
>
>>Nobody prevents you from gathering like-minded people and trading
>>for fixed prices, finance each others' MD education and other
>>stuff you mentioned. That's the beauty of a rather *free* system,
>>that other systems can exist in it, while the converse isn't true,
>>so that people usually evade into an illegal black market.
>
>
> Not necessarily; the host government can veto many things in your
> system. But all change indeed is by people who push for democratic
> values.
I think if people produce and share stuff among themselves, then
that wouldn't touch the government at all. But maybe you're right
and they'd send the police over, just like when a bunch of
libertarians would buy a couple acres farmland and found their own
private town there, without acknowledging the rule of holy USA or
Germany.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> > Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> >>One sidenote to Robert Marlow: I won't respond anymore, because
> >>tit akes too long. If you really believe the system you describe
> >>would work, try it out!
> >
> > You'd be quite surprised how many Lisp users do implement such
> > systems.
> >
> > For example, look into who hosts lisp.tech.coop. Two Lisp users
> > there (at least), whose words you've no doubt read.
>
> Here:
> http://www.tech.coop/About%20Us
>
> I don't know them...
> (and couldn't find other info who's responsible for lisp.tech.coop)
>
> Also, I wouldn't say that a cooperative has *anything* to do with
> Mr Marlow's posts. A cooperative is just something like a
> non-profit in a capitalist system (as is the case). I never said
> anything against non-profit cooperatives. In fact I think that
> they are necessary, but all those anti-capitalists always say that
> without heavy state intervention and forced taxation no
> cooperation is possible and everybody will starve, and chaos reign
> the earth... ;)
Oh come on, I'm sure they hate today's incredible nanny state. ;) But
it requires looking past slick politician rhetoric. This goes for the
Democrats, not just the Republicans.
I read a paper that Drew (of the tech.coop) wrote about its internal
structure and Lisp, and it certainly wasn't like Robert's ideas; but it
gives consumers democratic control over its internal workings, etc. Too
bad I haven't heard about it being released, but no doubt more
important things came up.
You should probably read Planet Lisp occasionally, to see stuff like:
http://home.comcast.net/~bc19191/blog/050505.html
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
>
> I read a paper that Drew (of the tech.coop) wrote about its internal
> structure and Lisp, and it certainly wasn't like Robert's ideas; but it
> gives consumers democratic control over its internal workings, etc. Too
> bad I haven't heard about it being released, but no doubt more
> important things came up.
Not more important, but more pressing. Unfortunately i'm too busy making
my living writing free software in Lisp for our members :) . I'd
honestly forgotten about that paper, but I'll try to get it released at
some point.
I've avoided this thread, but since i got dragged into it, i'll add my
$0.02 CAD.
Capitalism is not so much the problem.. its the "corporation". A
corporation is responsible to it's shareholders, and legally is required
to "increase shareholder value". Also, a corporation is given all the
legal rights of a person, but without any of the responsibility. What
else can this produce but sociopathic entities?
ESR is fond of saying "Marx, Engels et al. did not invent the idea of
co-operation.". Why is it that people who advocate the ideals of
co-operation and social responsibility are always classed as "communist"
or "socialist", often by people who seem to be unfamiliar with what
those terms actually mean?
There is no system, economic or political, that can ever "work" for
everybody in all cases... this is the nature of the beast. Until more
people come to realise that, and take _personal_ responsibility for
their own little part of the world, we'll all be left asking "Who's
Emma?" until the end of our days :)
--
Drew Crampsie
drewc at tech dot coop
"Never mind the bollocks -- here's the sexp's tools."
-- Karl A. Krueger on comp.lang.lisp
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> You should probably read Planet Lisp occasionally, to see stuff like:
Thanks for the link. Now that's a (meta) blog that doesn't suck :)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
On Sun, 08 May 2005 13:58:48 -0700, Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Robert Marlow wrote:
> As I understand, you are mainly talking about economic systems internal to
> a local economy, while Don is talking about a more global one?
Not necessarily. Such a system can extend to any size. It would just
probably require being broken down into smaller manageable sizes which
operate together through similar principles as individuals do in the
smallest subsystem.
> In our current world, corporations are structured internally as
> authoritarian command economies. They efficiently allocate resources in a
> centralized fashion rather than market-based, nearly always. Externally,
> they operate within a state-capitalist system which generally violates
> free trade (as Intel's Andy Grove happily points out).
Exactly. That's why I compared the USSR to one big nation-wide company
before.
> In the possible universe you mention, local communities would form
> internally democratic+constitutional (?) economies, and may interact with
> each other under some sort of market system.
Not necessarily. They may interact in a similar way to how individuals
interact in a single economy - sharing costs of investment for larger
projects, deciding collectively how to best solve social problems etc. But
you have the basic idea.
> Also, one important lynchpin to your ideas seems to be that people can't
> benefit from the state enforcing property-monopoly-at-a-distance. That is,
> someone can't live in an immaculate neighborhood while pumping sewage into
> people's rivers on another coast. If you were determined to undertake
> those industries, you'd have to pump sewage into your local environment.
I tend to think of it more that land isn't something someone should be
able to set a barrier up for exclusivity. Things like "use rights" should
be respected, but in general land everywhere belongs to everyone and
everyone affected by some abuse of land should get a say in what is to be
done about it with no favouring toward anyone for imaginary ideas like
property.
>> Because society wants the returns for their investment of labour into
>> R&D. Why would people refuse societal progress just because they can't
>> charge interest from labour for it? They get their rewards from the
>> societal outcomes of the R&D itself.
>
> Right now, the state plunges beaucoup bucks in R&D, as Lisp inventor John
> McCarthy explained. Noting that wages stagnated/declined despite huge
> advances in tech productivity, today's fake-capitalist model is about
> stealing from America's commons, apparently.
>
> Corporations only invest in short-term R&D that is likely to have an
> obvious payoff, whereas the government subsidizes the hugely expensive
> fundamental research which leads to true advances, and purchases tech that
> isn't yet cost-effective enough to compete in a free market. The only
> corporations that may research fundamental tech are monopolists like AT&T,
> whose Bell Labs stopped pursuing fundmental R&D once AT&T was stripped of
> monopoly protections.
Yeah, because corporations, just like capitalist description of market
forces, don't understand that something can have value in society without
having a corresponding monetary profit to the investor.
>> People get paid into their bank accounts. Surplus unused wealth stored
>> in the bank can be used to fund investments. Same way banks work now
>> minus interest.
>
> Presumably, money creation has to then be placed under different
> management than bodies like the Federal Reserve and bankers? Maybe
> alternative currency models are needed?
It's easy in a system which recognises labour as the source of all value
to determine how much money to create. People simply trade labour hours as
money. I do 5 hours of work, it's added to my account and I can use it to
buy something which took 5 hours of labour or less to produce.
On Sat, 07 May 2005 23:33:39 -0700, Don Geddis wrote:
>> A whole package of things is required to add value to something, and labor
>> is generally (but not necessarily always) part of that package. But
>> that's a different statement.
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote on Mon, 09 May 2005:
> You keep claiming this and yet you've still failed to provide one thing
> that adds value to an item.
As I said, it's a package of things which increase the value of an item,
and labor is part of that package.
If I have yeast, and a pan, and an oven, and a baker, and some electricity,
and some time, then I can produce bread. Which is worth more than the value
of the raw materials. But making the bread requires:
1. Raw materials (yeast, electricity), which get used up.
2. Tools (pan, oven), which get some wear & tear.
3. Labor (baker), who needed prior training, and puts in hours of effort.
If I'm missing any component, then I don't get bread.
Now of course you're right that the pan, and oven, and electricity, etc.
only came about because of someone else's labor hours, perhaps in the distant
past. But the key is that they aren't necessarily owned by me. If each
component is owned by a different person, it's not an obvious question how
to divide up the credit for making the bread. The baker is the only one
who directly puts in labor hours, but a baker can't achieve anything by
himself, without all the other components.
Of course, you have an economic theory where no individual owns anything
that can be used to produce goods; all such items are owned by the state
(or "community"). It's fine to have such a theory, but you aren't giving
alternative economic theories credit by constantly claiming that the value
of an item is "only" the labor hours used. It's obvious to everyone that
much more is important in producing products than just human labor.
Much of the key is where the rest of the stuff comes from.
>>> and consequently the value of any good or service is equivalent to the
>>> amount of labour put into it.
>>
>> No, that is not a consequent.
>
> Just because that's how capitalism works doesn't mean it's the best.
> That's circular reasoning.
What I meant by this is that it is NOT logically implied. That there are
plenty of alternatives that are feasible also. So rather than this being
a _necessary_ consequent, it is merely a goal of your society. You can force
things to turn out that way, but it isn't a logical truth that they must
turn out that way.
>> And utility will continue to be determined that way, even if you fix
>> prices using your formula (which is based on labor hours). That may fix
>> prices, but it won't change true utility/value, which is always in the eye
>> of the beholder and generally somewhat different for each individual.
>
> Just because the most popular current economic theory is the subjective
> theory of value doesn't mean it's true.
You're confusing price with value. I'm talking about even within your own
economic system. Forget about capitalism for a moment, and free markets.
Go ahead and force the price of an item to be whatever your formula says
about labor hours.
My point is that the utility an individual gets by purchasing an item varies.
This is obviously true, and should hardly be a point of contention. It's
even true for a single human over time. How valuable is a bottle of Gatorade
to you? Right after you've had breakfast, it isn't worth much. While you're
in the middle of sleeping, it isn't worth much. Right after an hour of hard
exercise, where you've sweated away a lot of fluids and are dehydrated, you're
likely to be very, very appreciative of a sudden bounty of finding an extra
bottle available.
When lots of different people purchase a given item for the same price,
they'll wind up with different reactions to the transaction. Some will find
slightly more value than they paid, so they're mildly happy. Some will find
tremendous value, but having paid the same amount, they are thrilled to have
gotten what appears to them to be a great deal. This is true whether the
price is set by your formula, or by the free market. Even floating prices
in a capitalist free market don't mean that everyone pays what the thing is
worth to them. That is differential customer-based pricing (which is generally
outlawed in capitalist economies!). What happens is that everybody pays the
same price: Some people don't purchase it, because the value (utility) to them
is less than the market price; some people have a value right at that price;
but some people gain huge value, yet still pay the same price, and are
delivered a windfall of utility.
> For instance, try to explain how a new item's price is set using
> subjective value. The price is set before demand is even known. Supply and
> demand fails to explain anything more than fluctuations in price, not the
> price they tend to.
We must be talking about different concepts. By "value", I meant the utility
that an individual experiences by possessing the item. How happy it makes
them. This is a concept unrelated to the price of the product.
In a free market, prices tend towards the average of everyone's utility.
But not towards the utility experienced by any given individual.
If you understand what I'm saying, but still disagree, we could explore this
topic in more depth. But I don't see how you could believe that everyone
gets equivalent happiness from the same products.
> There's always the problem of who's going to have to do the unpleasant
> work.
Yes.
> In capitalism, the solution is fixed by giving the job to underprivileged,
> desperate people who can't get employment elsewhere. It fixes the problem
> but it's an exploitative solution.
That's not correct. In capitalism, wages rise until some citizen finds that
it actually is worth their time after all to do what otherwise would have
been unpleasant. They're actually quite happy to do the job at the higher
wages.
You're fixing wages (across all industries), though, so you need some type
of coercion in order to force people to do jobs they don't want to do.
> There are more humane alternatives. Such as sharing unpleasant work among
> the general population are available. That particular solution has the
> advantage of fairness; if everyone contributes to the mess, everyone
> should contribute to cleaning it up.
I'm talking about jobs like putting in 10 years of hard medical training to
become a neurosurgeon. You can't "share" that unpleasant work among the
general population. Among other things, not every citizen is capable of
achieving competence at the job. And unfortunately, of the few who could
do it, you haven't provided them any incentives to go through the hellish
training. So I fear you'll wind up with a society with not enough doctors
to cover the need, and no solution to getting more.
>> Where do the banks get the money, in your society?
>
> People get paid into their bank accounts. Surplus unused wealth stored in
> the bank can be used to fund investments. Same way banks work now minus
> interest.
You don't understand how the banking industry really works. Depositing wages
from hourly workers is only a tiny, tiny fraction of the source of money
that gets loaned out to business investment today.
There isn't enough cash in your proposed source to fund significant investment
for your society.
> Floating prices does not fix scarcity due to products ceasing
> production. No production means nobody can purchase it. A product which
> doesn't exist can have no price.
You have to look at why the production had ceased. My original example was
a manufactured item, where the manufacturer was only interested in making a
small number of items if the price was fixed (by your hours of labor formula).
That results in shortages, by choice. The people who are able to make more,
choose not to.
These shortages disappear if the price is allowed to rise. In that case,
the manufacturer (or possibly new competitors jumping into the industry)
start churning out more product.
This is a positive effect that you can't have if you don't allow prices to
vary by supply and demand.
>> You've completely missed the other part of the effect: yes, raising prices
>> lowers demand. BUT IT ALSO RAISES SUPPLY! You actually get more items
>> made, when the price for the item goes higher. _That's_ the beauty of
>> free markets.
>
> Wrong. We're talking about scarce resources which by definition means
> supply has little room to move no matter how high prices reach.
No, actually, we weren't talking about scarce resources -- we were talking
about scarce goods (toilet paper, PCs, iPods).
But in any case, I challenge you to name a real-world example of some item
(or "resource") where available supply would not increase if prices rose
significantly.
>> You need to understand that individuals can have very, very different
>> utilities for the exact same item.
>
> I understand that completely. What I'm saying is that doesn't determine an
> item's objective value.
I deny that any item even has a property which could be called "objective
value". Please define the phrase in a way that is neutral to the economic
theory, and without referring to your calculation of what this value actually
is. I just want to know what you think the phrase means.
In my opinion, there is no value for an item which is objective. All value
is subjective.
> ultimately an item's value tends toward its objective value which is
> determined by how much direct and indirect labour it costs to produce.
You mean "an item's price", not "value", right?
In any case, in free markets, prices for items do tend towards some stable
point. But that final price only has a loose correlation with labor hours
used in production. So you are wrong that the free market price is determined
by the labor used to produce it.
You can force this artificial connection in your planned economy, but like
your other examples there is no necessary logical connection between the two.
>> You aren't allowing wages to vary because of the quality/fun of the job,
>> or because of the training required, etc. Given your new approach, the
>> problem is simply that no individuals (aside from a few crazy folks) are
>> going to choose to begin medical training. There's no personal (economic)
>> benefit to it.
>
> Why do you think people need to be crazy to want to do medical training?
> What makes it more unpleasant than say programming? I know many MDs enjoy
> being a MD simply for the personal fulfillment they get from it.
People may enjoy being working doctors. I've never known a doctor in the
middle of training (and residency) to be enjoying their experience. And I've
known a lot of them, as they go through the training. They endure the
training, they don't enjoy it.
> Assuming you're employed, if you're only doing your job because of the
> level of monetary reward it gives you and not because you find it
> personally fulfilling then you're in the wrong job and are doomed to be
> miserable until you find a job which does give you a rewarding experience.
But the monetary rewards can be a component of why you enjoy your life.
It can strongly influence overall life happiness.
I'm not saying you should do a job you hate. But if you like two jobs about
equally well, perhaps one mildly more than the other, but the mildly worse
job pays ten times as much ... well, I'd bet your overall life would be best
by choosing the mildly worse job.
> Also, there's no shortage of labour supply in a system which has no
> unemployment and reallocates resources to areas in demand. If everyone
> entering the workforce requires employment to live in the society, they're
> going to need to pick employment which is in demand for more labour since
> there's no room where labour's already saturated.
Ah, so you're eliminating choice in one's employment? You go where society
assigns you? You turn 18, and everybody before you already filled the
lifeguard positions, so sewer worker is the only thing left. Guess you're
stuck. And what, you imagine long wait lists for the lifeguard jobs?
You've introduced scarcity and rationing into the job hunt! And most people
will be stuck in a job they don't like, and don't want to be doing, and they
dream of winning their private lottery and getting lucky enough to be selected
by the society for a job they can at least tolerate.
Sounds like a dystopia to me. At least capitalist economies tend to have a
few jobs available all the time, in every industry. So a new worker can
actually choose what kind of work they want to do. If they're at all
competent, they can find a job in their chosen field.
>> You'll quickly find that there are zero items available in every
>> fixed-price market, and _all_ of your societies commerce will take place
>> in the floating-price free market.
>
> You make this claim on the invalid assumption that a floating-price, free
> market is superior and everyone would prefer it.
Not the purchasers; you're right about that. They'd rather use the
artificially low fixed price. Sadly, no items are available in that market.
The problem is the manufacturers. Say there's this baker making bread.
And he has an option of selling his bread in the fixed market, at a price
you calculate to only use his labor hours (and raw materials costs).
Say, that's $1/loaf of bread. But right next door is the free market,
where the same loaf of bread is going for $2. Guess what: pretty much every
baker is going to send all their bread to the free market.
> I'd contend that you're false and the reason markets are so popular right
> now is because of state sponsorship and barriers put up against
> alternatives.
What barriers currently exist for your fixed-price markets? Nothing is
stopping you from setting up such a market right now. It isn't illegal.
Open your doors, and do your calculations with labor hours to find out what
the "correct" fixed price of every item is.
Your only problem will be that no manufacturer will provide you with items
to sell at those prices. Your market will exist, the buyers will flock there,
but you'll have nothing to sell them.
I don't see how today's situation is any different from the one you imagine,
if you're going to allow a free market to exist side by side with your
fixed price markets.
> Right. So black markets are providing goods and services that are
> artificially made to be scarce by state intervention. A black market is
> then one which breaks laws on how markets should work. Given my society
> has no such laws there's no black markets and thus fewer than what there
> is now.
Far from it. Your economic theory is full of prohibitions on things that two
individuals, given the freedom to negotiate a transaction between themselves,
would otherwise do. You don't allow rents, interest, or variations in wages
between industries. You'll need to enforce these things with force, because
otherwise they won't occur.
And in every case in which you distort the market with one of these goals,
a black market will appear to satisfy the unmet demand.
>> But for ordinary items, with low taxes? No black markets, and also no
>> scarcity. Bananas, razor blades, PCs, toilet paper. Capitalist
>> economies have neither black markets nor (long-term) shortages of these
>> things.
>
> Yep, and there'd be no reason for those goods not to be available in my
> system either. The only cases which you've provided where there might be
> scarcity have exactly the same problems in capitalism with mostly inferior
> solutions and no superior solutions.
No, there's plenty of reason why these things won't be available in your
economy. You have fixed all wages to be the same rate. This will result in
a shortage of workers for the unpleasant jobs, and hence a shortage of those
kinds of products.
Capitalism raises wages to attract workers to otherwise unpleasant jobs.
This is how enough products get made to fulfill demand. Your economy doesn't
have that option, so you'll wind up with constant across-the-board shortages.
> Capitalism is the *only* currently known system where unemployment exists
> at all.
Could be.
> And other societies do not have / have not had any great problems taking up
> new opportunities. Unemployment then is not a necessary evil. It's just a
> plain evil.
That's incorrect. Capitalism is the most dynamic and high-growth economy
yet tried at a large scale. Every world economy that has switched to
capitalism has outperformed their neighbors who tried a different approach.
Now, you may say that your ideas haven't yet been tried at a large scale.
But you do need to realize that you've attacked the current historical
champion of economic styles.
> People who don't have money and wealth barely even get heard by the
> general population. How are they found to be more electable?
You start small, get elected to school boards perhaps, local town mayor.
Or be competent at some job, get appointed by a current politician to a
government post, and thereby achieve some name recognition. Many people
know Colin Powell's name in the US, and he has long service in government,
but he was never elected to any post. Yet if he decided to run for some
office today, he'd have a strong candidacy.
None of these routes have much of anything to do with the candidate's net
worth.
> The people who are most popular in elections are the ones who have the
> funding to pay for large campaigns which successfully cast them in a
> positive light to the people and get their names well known.
As I said before, you've confused cause and effect.
>>> "Tyranny of the majority" is the least evil.
>>
>> The concern is whether a 51% "majority vote" should allow any outcome,
>> and provide absolute power to the winning side. The contrasting side
>> suggests a concept of "rights", which the group is not permitted to
>> violate, EVEN IF they get a 51% majority.
>>
> Yeah, and what makes a representative system so special in that only it
> can have a constitution and not a full democracy?
You're the one who brought up a representative system, not me. This whole
part of the discussion started when you made a claim that important decisions
in your economy would be made by "majority vote", and you didn't personally
care about some so-called "tyranny of the majority". You didn't believed that
it was a real threat.
It _is_ a real threat, and constitutional rights is part of the solution.
Perhaps you're accepting that now. But you didn't say it originally. What
you originally said was that you thought "tyranny of the majority" was an
overblown, hyped, false threat.
Representative democracy vs. full democracy was something you brought up,
not me, and is irrelevant to the topic under discussion.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Don Geddis wrote:
>
>
>>What I said was markets that don't have huge gaps between rich or poor are
>>less likely to result in excessively rich people who go about denying poor
>>people of access to scarce resources by out-purchasing them.
>
>
> You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Very few items
> are scarce resources just because rich people outbuy poor people.
> Bill Gates and/or Larry Ellison could presumably purchase all the hamburgers
> that McDonald's makes in a year, but somehow I'm still able to go to my
> local franchise and pick one up for a dollar.
>
> The gap between the rich and the poor has very little to do with what the
> poor are able to purchase. If there were fewer rich people, the poor would
> not suddenly have the ability to buy more stuff.
>
Bad example: hamburgers are a zero-entry game. Try residential housing.
Try buying a house in, say, Sydney. The rich have now bought out every
inch of residential land, and have priced out of the market not only the
poor, but even the relatively wealthy who had the misfortune to be in
need of a home now.
So, how does the "free" market work here: the people looking for a home
(to live in) have to take up a huge mortgage they cannot service
with their wages anymore. The rich people who do not need a home,
take up an investment loan, scoop the rents, cancel the tax by claiming
the loan repayments as "business expense", and essentially get the
property for next to nothing. Their merit - having just a bit more
money just a bit earlier.
Judges1318 wrote:
> The rich people who do not need a home,
> take up an investment loan, scoop the rents, cancel the tax by claiming
> the loan repayments as "business expense", and essentially get the
> property for next to nothing. Their merit - having just a bit more
> money just a bit earlier.
until the next revolution, of course.. when they'll be hanging off the
lanterns... (*rant*)
mkb.
Matthias Buelow wrote:
Their merit - having just a bit more
>>money just a bit earlier.
>
>
> until the next revolution, of course.. when they'll be hanging off the
> lanterns... (*rant*)
>
The worst is, I am all for the markets and the private initiative and
the success through personal merit, but there, certain things are just
not right.
Judges1318 <·······@beaurat.at.hotpop.stop.com> wrote on Fri, 13 May 2005:
> Bad example: hamburgers are a zero-entry game.
I can't figure out what you think you mean by this. Hamburgers are a very
typical commodity, especially in the sense that as there is more demand,
the supply side can create more items. But I don't know if that's what you're
trying to get at with "zero-entry".
> Try residential housing.
I assume you think this is interesting because the world's supply of land
is fixed.
Note, though, that the supply of residential housing is not fixed. As there
is more demand (and more money), over the long term there will be much more
residential housing available (via new construction, and higher densities).
> Try buying a house in, say, Sydney. The rich have now bought out every
> inch of residential land, and have priced out of the market not only the
> poor, but even the relatively wealthy who had the misfortune to be in
> need of a home now.
> So, how does the "free" market work here: the people looking for a home
> (to live in) have to take up a huge mortgage they cannot service
> with their wages anymore.
Surely you're just contrasting Sydney today with Sydney of a generation ago,
when things appeared much more affordable.
But why do the poor people need to have a "right" to live in Sydney? If it
is too expensive, why don't they move to a more affordable town? There's
plenty of cheap land in the world. And plenty of affordable housing. In
fact, I'm sure you can find housing of the same quality as existed in
Sydney 20 years ago somewhere (just perhaps not in Sydney itself today),
for roughly the same price (accounting for inflation). Sydney today is a
_better_ place than it was a couple decades ago, so it isn't significant that
it may be less affordable to the average person today than it was then.
Of course the prices in the most desirable neighborhoods will rise. But it
isn't a tragedy that the poor can't afford them. They _could_ afford to
live elsewhere, and there is nothing evil with a society that suggests they
do so.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't
do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the
safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
-- Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835-1910)
Don Geddis wrote:
> But why do the poor people need to have a "right" to live in Sydney? If it
> is too expensive, why don't they move to a more affordable town? There's
> plenty of cheap land in the world. And plenty of affordable housing. In
True. There is a reason why I don't study in Berlin, T�bingen,
Heidelberg, or other slightly expensive German cities. There is a
reason why I didn't do my US exchange year in Long Beach, CA.
There is a reason I might not move to Paris. That reason is cost
and relative gains or value for me. The beauty especially about
CS is that you can at least in theory work from anywhere.
Somewhere I read that more and more entrepreneurs are setting up
their businesses in rural areas in the Midwest and Southern
States, because it's vastly cheaper than CA.
In other places, say, Sidney, moving might make your way to work
longer. But even if people don't find a job in a cheaper area,
they can always choose to drive a bit longer and save on rent.
Actually, the company might consider moving to where it can
attract more workers. An expensive area isn't really the best
place to look for workers in the sub $50/h segment.
--
Don't let school interfere with your education. -- Mark Twain
Don Geddis wrote:
> I can't figure out what you think you mean by this. Hamburgers are a very
> typical commodity, especially in the sense that as there is more demand,
> the supply side can create more items. But I don't know if that's what you're
> trying to get at with "zero-entry".
>
It requires little investment to enter the game of hamburger production,
and the time between the moment you decide to enter the game and the
time you can begin supplying the market is very short.
Thus, the hamburger business is perfectly open to competition,
and this keeps the price of hamburgers limited.
> Note, though, that the supply of residential housing is not fixed. As there
> is more demand (and more money), over the long term there will be much more
> residential housing available (via new construction, and higher densities).
But a human life is limited, and human mind inflexible. The legislators
still operate with free standing houses on quarter-acre blocks, and two
floors above the ground is considered a "high rise" and building
permissions flatly refused (unless you grease the bureaucratic wheels,
to say euphemistically). So, before anything happens with more housing
supply, (and more schools, shops, libraries, train/bus, more water
more gas piping more power lines, more phone lines ...) many dollars
and many years are needed. It takes huge resources (and time is one of
them) to enter the game.
> But why do the poor people need to have a "right" to live in Sydney? If it
> is too expensive, why don't they move to a more affordable town? There's
> plenty of cheap land in the world.
I have a computer and I switch it on, and it is Windows. But I am not
happy, I erase the hard drive, and install Linux. Now I switch it on,
and it is Linux.
But a person cannot be "reinstalled" at will. A person has a family,
friends relatives, community, habits, and wants to remain near to
the familiar environment. Even if you move and settle elsewhere, you
keep your accent and liking for the old which makes it hard for you to
feel "at home" at the new place, and it makes it hard for the
surrounding to accept you as having a right to be there.
Market is not the answer to every question. Having one answer to every
question is ideology. It may work for some time, but in the end it
pisses people off, communism or economic rationalism, whatever the name.
Judges1318 wrote:
>> Note, though, that the supply of residential housing is not fixed. As
>> there
>> is more demand (and more money), over the long term there will be much
>> more
>> residential housing available (via new construction, and higher
>> densities).
>
>
> But a human life is limited, and human mind inflexible. The legislators
> still operate with free standing houses on quarter-acre blocks, and two
> floors above the ground is considered a "high rise" and building
> permissions flatly refused (unless you grease the bureaucratic wheels,
> to say euphemistically). So, before anything happens with more housing
> supply, (and more schools, shops, libraries, train/bus, more water
> more gas piping more power lines, more phone lines ...) many dollars
> and many years are needed. It takes huge resources (and time is one of
> them) to enter the game.
Well, the bureaucracy you mention is nothing but a sign that more
freedom would lower market barriers, making competition better.
Also, there's lots of innovation happening in the pre-fabrication
house market. Houses get cheaper to produce all the time (partly
by mass production), and at the same time their isolation gets
vastly better, so that you can survive the winter almost without
heating.
If *really* poor people are to afford housing, of course there
would need to be some pooling of resources, like in all good
cooperation. Buy in bulk! Share houses, etc.
> I have a computer and I switch it on, and it is Windows. But I am not
> happy, I erase the hard drive, and install Linux. Now I switch it on,
> and it is Linux.
>
> But a person cannot be "reinstalled" at will. A person has a family,
> friends relatives, community, habits, and wants to remain near to
> the familiar environment. Even if you move and settle elsewhere, you
Of course we want the perfect paradisical place to live, with a
gorgeous wife, some kids, a nice big house, super-clean air, a big
garden...
Hey, guess what: we can't choose! The average US-family moves
every 18 months, and I don't think that US kids are vastly more
stupid than Europeans (who constantly bitch that moving to another
city to get a job would be inhuman). If they are less critical
and ask less questions that's more a result of the schooling system.
> keep your accent and liking for the old which makes it hard for you to
> feel "at home" at the new place, and it makes it hard for the
> surrounding to accept you as having a right to be there.
Why? I feel at home in Bremen (my hometown), Dublin, Manhattan,
Malta, and other places. I don't expect to graduate and get a job
in my college town. I think that attitude would be ridiculous. I
certainly wouldn't want to feed lazy people who don't care to move
with my tax money.
> Market is not the answer to every question. Having one answer to every
> question is ideology. It may work for some time, but in the end it
> pisses people off, communism or economic rationalism, whatever the name.
Why? Are you a woman, answering every question with three
different answers every time you're asked (try it!)?
And what's wrong with being rational? I get pretty pissed at
people who try to make politics without considering the actual
*facts*. THAT's blind ideology, and doesn't get us anywhere! If
you haven't noticed, economists don't just wildly guess or talk
shit, they actually measure and observe developing countries in
great detail. So far there hasn't been found an alternative to
the market, or what would you suggest: command economies, or maybe
good old traditional agriculture, with no poverty, and no
healthcare, no technology, no contact to other countries and
communities at all...?
--
Don't let school interfere with your education. -- Mark Twain
Judges1318 <·······@beaurat.at.hotpop.stop.com> writes:
> Don Geddis wrote:
>
>>
>>>What I said was markets that don't have huge gaps between rich or poor are
>>>less likely to result in excessively rich people who go about denying poor
>>>people of access to scarce resources by out-purchasing them.
>> You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Very few items
>> are scarce resources just because rich people outbuy poor people.
>> Bill Gates and/or Larry Ellison could presumably purchase all the hamburgers
>> that McDonald's makes in a year, but somehow I'm still able to go to my
>> local franchise and pick one up for a dollar.
>> The gap between the rich and the poor has very little to do with
>> what the
>> poor are able to purchase. If there were fewer rich people, the poor would
>> not suddenly have the ability to buy more stuff.
>>
>
> Bad example: hamburgers are a zero-entry game. Try residential housing.
>
> Try buying a house in, say, Sydney. The rich have now bought out every
> inch of residential land, and have priced out of the market not only the
> poor, but even the relatively wealthy who had the misfortune to be in
> need of a home now.
>
> So, how does the "free" market work here: the people looking for a home
> (to live in) have to take up a huge mortgage they cannot service
> with their wages anymore. The rich people who do not need a home,
> take up an investment loan, scoop the rents, cancel the tax by claiming
> the loan repayments as "business expense", and essentially get the
> property for next to nothing. Their merit - having just a bit more
> money just a bit earlier.
Everytime you see something bad in the market, at the same time the
people denouncing it will tell you why there's something bad and where
it comes from really.
> The rich people who do not need a home,
> take up an investment loan, scoop the rents, cancel the tax by claiming
> the loan repayments as "business expense", and essentially get the
> property for next to nothing.
How could they "cancel the tax by claiming the loan repayments as
'business expense'", if there was no corrupt state to enforce it on
the victims?
You're not criticizing free market, you're asking for a libertarian state.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GCS d? s++:++ a+ C+++ UL++++ P--- L+++ E+++ W++ N+++ o-- K- w---
O- M++ V PS PE++ Y++ PGP t+ 5+ X++ R !tv b+++ DI++++ D++
G e+++ h+ r-- z?
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: Economic and politics (Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions)
Date:
Message-ID: <tNydnVz31orQAR3fRVn-uQ@dls.net>
Robert Marlow wrote:
> No I'm not. I'm simply recognising that the only way to add value to
> something is with labour and consequently the value of any good or service
> is equivalent to the amount of labour put into it.
This is nonsensical on its face. 'Value' and 'labor' aren't even
measured in the same units.
Paul
From: Russell McManus
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87hdhkjnh9.fsf@cl-user.org>
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> writes:
> Do these things contribute to society? Of course. But does the holy
> "invisible hand" of the market give it the provisions it needs? No.
> Because a market, despite the propaganda, isn't a good yardstick on
> what's valuable in society. To the market, things aren't valued
> according to utility or human expense, they're valued according to
> how well people are brainwashed into paying the highest price for
> garbage they don't need.
Your comment assumes that _your_ judgement of "utility" or "human
expense" is going to drive resource allocation throughout society.
Well who died and made you grand poobah?
We tried having the state decide how to allocate resources several
times during the twentieth century. The experiment failed
spectacularly, at the cost of tens of millions of lives. Why do you
refuse to learn from this?
> What's a shame to me is that we can't all contribute in a similar
> way without setting up charity funds and marketing divisions. Why
> can't we all just do what needs to be done and have everyone share
> the wealth?
Political agency is the reason. Read Hayek for more details.
Sorry for the off-topic rant.
-russ
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u7jif98n8.fsf@nhplace.com>
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> writes:
> What pisses me off is that such provision to society isn't considered
> something which justifies survival in our society.
The whole concept of having money is that someone trades you money for
something you've done that's of value. Then you can buy food. When
you start doing things of value but not asking for money to measure
that value, you can't tell if you're helping society or just helping
yourself. There's no accounting. Money is a low-overhead way of
keeping track of who's contributing and who's not.
> If I want to just write free software that I know many people can make use
> of then that's not enough to justify my being able to eat. I have to
> market it, attribute it a price and attempt to legally force people to pay
> for it.
Or, in other words, you have to prove that your doing this task was
something the world wanted.
The alternative, which doesn't involve proving you're doing what the
world wants, is for you to work directly for food. You negotiate a
job to do that they think is worth the food. Money just allows you to
swap indirectly with other people besides the food sellers directly.
> If people choose to use the software without paying for it
Then it's your fault for giving it away. You gave it away freely,
remember? The question is why. And I frankly can't answer that for
you, since I don't recommend you do it except to someone who doesn't
have the means to pay.
> and without my being able to track them down then I don't get paid
> and society lets me starve for not having contributed
> in a way through which I was able to extract my livelihood.
No, for not having accounted for how you've contributed. Society created
a way for you to account: to get a job. You elected to do a job but not
get paid, so it didn't count as a job. Now you still have to get a job,
and you're tired and worn out. Oh, and you've driven down the value you
can charge for your work because you gave things away and drove down the
expected price of things.
Even if you're doing something useful, consider, too, that it might not
STILL be useful. e.g., maybe the world needs a few Scheme interpreters,
but they don't need as many as people seem willing to write (whether
or not they're made for sale).
> Likewise, if my wife decides she wants to devote all her time to caring
> for sick, underprivileged children she will herself starving unless she
> can somehow convince people to fund her expenses.
Caring for others is a luxury. I suppose people differ on this, but I
believe it is not the responsibility of people who are hurting to be
charitable, and often it is outright irresponsible. One's first obligation
is to pay for oneself, so they don't become a charity case themselves.
Charity isn't just about mindset, it's also about means. I'm not always
impressed by people being charitable, especially with others' money.
Someone I know was in economic difficulty. I and several people were
willing to give this person money, on provision they didn't give the
money back away to the church. ("I promised the church money. I'm
tythed. I have to," this person would explain.) "Too bad," I would
explain, "but you are now the charity case. If you need money and
your church won't help you, who is it for?" "The needy" the person
explained, not understanding. "Well, if you are not one of them,
we're not giving you money," said I and my friends. This is the
problem. People don't account for their cash flow. Kids want to
emulate parents by being generous, because they crave the notariety
and adulation, but they start doing it while they are still taking
money from someone else. That money and adulation is owed, if anyone,
the parents, not the kids. But maybe the parents didn't want their
original support money spent that way at all. How many are allowed to
make an informed decision?
One of the things I most hate about times of economic hardship, which I
have been through myself and am going through now, is not being able to
give to charities. But it gives me something to aspire to, when I get to
the point where I've done enough to make things balance.
> Do these things contribute to society? Of course. But does the holy
> "invisible hand" of the market give it the provisions it needs? No.
> Because a market, despite the propaganda, isn't a good yardstick on what's
> valuable in society.
And democracy is not the best way to get a good leader, either. It
optimizes "worst case", not "best case", behavior.
The issue isn't whether the market is a good yardstick, but whether you
have something better to propose. Communism was tried, and we saw its
worst case get worse than we have now. So it looks like a market, with
an appropriate set of rules, is the best thing anyone's come up with.
The issue is what rules make the market unfair.
The problem with free software is that it is opting out of the market.
> To the market, things aren't valued according to
> utility or human expense, they're valued according to how well people are
> brainwashed into paying the highest price for garbage they don't need.
>
> Stallman, regardless of his personal vices, is contributing something good
> to society.
You say this like it's a fact and not an opinion. I think it certainly
requires more analysis.
> What's a shame to me is that we can't all contribute in a
> similar way without setting up charity funds and marketing divisions. Why
> can't we all just do what needs to be done and have everyone share the
> wealth?
Kind of a "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his
needs" kind of thing? Hmmm, you may be onto something there...
> I'd much rather just code software and give it away. Fighting for a higher
> place in the pecking order seems to me to be a big waste of time and
> effort that'd be better spent writing more code. Perhaps you'd be happier
> too, Kent, if you didn't have to keep worrying yourself over profit.
I understand why you'd say that. I'm internally motivated. But most people
are apparently not. I might not mind the lack of option to make a million
dollars, but I'd mind others doing what came from communism, that is:
"we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us". That sounds like an awful
world to live in. But then, with the wonders of the world wide web, maybe
someone who lived in the old Soviet Union can now chime in and tell me what
a Utopia it was, how I should have been there to experience it, and how they
hope it returns soon.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Kind of a "from each according to his abilities, to each according to
> his needs" kind of thing? Hmmm, you may be onto something there...
>
Note that there is a major difference between software and physical
goods here in the "from" bit: "from each" in physical goods would mean
I have lost something if you gain something in such an exchange. If I
gave you a sweater, I'm down one sweater. If I give someone a COPY of
software, though, I'd still have a copy myself. I still have the use
of that software. (And in fact, by willingly collaborating with
others on Libre software, I gain benefit-in-kind access to reams of
other software that I couldn't write myself in a single human
lifetime.)
Personally, I'd favor a free market in software provision - i.e.
copyright and patent law abolished. THOSE laws are centrally
controlling like some communist state, saying who can and cannot pass
on information (copyright) and who can and cannot apply a particular
bit of information to the physical world to better their own situation
(patent). Fuck 'em.
The scarce resource, programmer time, would still be billable: NEW stuff
will always need writing while the world changes. Closed source
software could still be released, even, and would probably find
countless willing buyers: after all, the world is full of idiots.
Note that I would probably support strengthened legal remedies against
plagiarism at the same time: i.e. while in the absence of copyright law
you'd have no right to stop me passing on released information
patterns, if I claimed to be the author of those information patterns
when in fact you had and I'd just got them from you, that would continue
to be fraudulent (people with hidden agendas often try and muddle
copyright and plagiarism concerns... pisses me off... you don't need to
be able to stop me passing on a copy of a work to be able to assert
authorship of the work...)
You may bluster about losing the opportunity to sell people
copy after copy of the software and rake in the dough: but that
opportunity really only exists if you presuppose copyright law exists.
To use the artificially inflated value of those sales of copies while
copyright law exists as a justification for the existence of copyright
law is no more valid than claiming that because slaves were valuable
tradeable items when slavery law was recognised, slavery should be
allowed. It's pretty much circular reasoning, and I'm always a bit
surprised when I see programmers using it: either they don't realise it
(and therefore have logic problems: should they be coding?), or they do
realise it internally but dishonestly argue (so can you trust them to
be coding?)...
> Kent M Pitman wrote:
>> Kind of a "from each according to his abilities, to each according to
>> his needs" kind of thing? Hmmm, you may be onto something there...
David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> wrote on Wed, 04 May 2005:
> Note that there is a major difference between software and physical
> goods here in the "from" bit: "from each" in physical goods would mean
> I have lost something if you gain something in such an exchange. If I
> gave you a sweater, I'm down one sweater. If I give someone a COPY of
> software, though, I'd still have a copy myself. I still have the use
> of that software.
No, the abstract nature of software is not the important point with Kent's
quote. The point is about human incentives, and the desire (and rewards from)
working.
Someone believing in Kent's quote (like a Marxist) is content to separate
effort from rewards. You should contribute, just because you wish to improve
society. But it is unrelated to what you take, which is determined instead
based on what you need.
For programmers, they would contribute their time. The fact that software can
be copied is irrelevant.
I outlined in an earlier posting some reasons why this economic structure
fails over the long term, including free riders, evaluation of effort/need,
etc.
But whether you use your time to create a physical good or an intellectual
good isn't really important to whether the economic model is feasible for
human society.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves
largess out of the public treasury.
-- Alexander Tyler, eighteenth-century Scottish historian
Don Geddis wrote:
> Someone believing in Kent's quote (like a Marxist) is content to
> separate effort from rewards.
Just a note that I was using the letter of the quote as a mere
springboard to illustrate a fundamental difference between physical
goods and software taken as an abstract entity and the mendacity of
those who try to blur the distinction, whatever you consider the
"important point" of the quote in spirit to be is not relevant for such
usage on my part (I don't particularly believe in the spirit of quote
as you expressed it in your post...)
Actually, obviously any particular copy of software is a physical good.
You can never show me some sort of ideal software independent of a
physical substrate, whether the software is in a flash rom or inscribed
on unfortunate jellyfish. I think claiming ownership over software or
a song or whatever in the abstract is absurd as claiming ownership over
"square". Or, hey, maths.
Unfortunately, humans do all sorts of absurd things.
There is simply no need for intangible property rights. Physical
property law applied to physical items acting as substrates for
information patterns suffices.
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uhdhibmn5.fsf@nhplace.com>
David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> writes:
> You may bluster about losing the opportunity to sell people
> copy after copy of the software and rake in the dough: but that
> opportunity really only exists if you presuppose copyright law exists.
No, it doesn't exist at all.
It's a paper tiger that people construct to fight against because either
it sounds moral to fight such beasts or because they just misunderstand.
If I build something for $100 that can be re-sold over and over for so
much that it makes me millions, the free market is well equipped to
have someone else come in for another $100 and make one that is sold
for only half as much, making only have my millions, but crowding me
out of the market. And that person will be replaced by someone
willing to again pay $100 for even less profit. Until the person comes
along who isn't willing to pay $100 to get the remaining profit, which
by that point must be small.
Of course, if it's HARD to do what I did for $100, then I'm legitimately
making money on the prowess of my programming notwithstanding what I spent.
In that case, I'm getting extra value for a precious resource and maybe
someone stops at $300 or $1000, but unless what I did is really really
clever, I'd bet I still don't make millions.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> writes:
>
>> You may bluster about losing the opportunity to sell people
>> copy after copy of the software and rake in the dough: but that
>> opportunity really only exists if you presuppose copyright law
>> exists.
>
> No, it doesn't exist at all.
Then you've got nothing to lose if you didn't have copyright law, eh?
But I would differ there: Successful proprietary software companies are
a clear counterexample. Without the copyright and lately patent
monopoly grants they hold, I very much doubt they'd have the paper
wealth they have now (and the computing landscape would likely be quite
different. Better or worse? Who knows. We don't have a second earth to
try out stuff on). I don't begrudge them that wealth all that much:
they are players in an unjust game, just as the ancestors
of large segments of Western and African populations became
wealthy by trading their fellow men as slaves. Doesn't mean the game
shouldn't be brought to an end.
Actually, the same applies to the West as a whole. At some point the
nations actually doing real work now are going to notice that
much of the USA's "wealth" is really imaginary and circular I"P" idiocy.
The USA is busily replacing factories with lawyers waving bits of paper
at eachother. I can't imagine it's sustainable (and note that we in the
EU are almost as bad).
> It's a paper tiger that people construct to fight against because
> either it sounds moral to fight such beasts or because they just
> misunderstand.
Whatever, dude. I think you're the one doing the misunderstanding
(at least outwardly) which is kinda sad for someone who borders on TLA
status.
Fundamentally, if you want copyright over an information pattern, you
want privilege to prevent others from communicating it. Making the
power to thus oppress a tradeable asset that entities other than the
official state can "own" is just shifting tyranny about, it's not
eliminating tyranny, and in fact seems to be creating an unofficial
and less accountable government in the form of corporations.
David Golden wrote:
> But I would differ there: Successful proprietary software companies are
> a clear counterexample. Without the copyright and lately patent
> monopoly grants they hold, I very much doubt they'd have the paper
> wealth they have now (and the computing landscape would likely be quite
The customers would have to pay less, so the money only ends up in
other places. Maybe we would have much more IT deployment?
> different. Better or worse? Who knows. We don't have a second earth to
> try out stuff on). I don't begrudge them that wealth all that much:
> they are players in an unjust game, just as the ancestors
> of large segments of Western and African populations became
> wealthy by trading their fellow men as slaves. Doesn't mean the game
> shouldn't be brought to an end.
And after all there are lots of programmers out there who want to
program even without patents and stuff. So the industry would
exist, and people would still invest in software.
> Actually, the same applies to the West as a whole. At some point the
> nations actually doing real work now are going to notice that
> much of the USA's "wealth" is really imaginary and circular I"P" idiocy.
> The USA is busily replacing factories with lawyers waving bits of paper
> at eachother. I can't imagine it's sustainable (and note that we in the
> EU are almost as bad).
I agree. It can't be sustainable. All it takes is another large
country that doesn't agree with the US's Intellectual "Property".
And I think China with its billion people would be tough to
beat, even if we stopped all trade with them, or whatever threats.
> Fundamentally, if you want copyright over an information pattern, you
> want privilege to prevent others from communicating it. Making the
> power to thus oppress a tradeable asset that entities other than the
> official state can "own" is just shifting tyranny about, it's not
> eliminating tyranny, and in fact seems to be creating an unofficial
> and less accountable government in the form of corporations.
Ack.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <tNydnV331orhBx3fRVn-uQ@dls.net>
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> David Golden wrote:
>
>> But I would differ there: Successful proprietary software companies are
>> a clear counterexample. Without the copyright and lately patent
>> monopoly grants they hold, I very much doubt they'd have the paper
>> wealth they have now (and the computing landscape would likely be quite
>
>
> The customers would have to pay less, so the money only ends up in other
> places. Maybe we would have much more IT deployment?
IT deployment would have been more centralized. Software would have
been kept secret, on servers located away from the customers.
Paul
Paul F. Dietz wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>
>> David Golden wrote:
>>
>>> But I would differ there: Successful proprietary software companies are
>>> a clear counterexample. Without the copyright and lately patent
>>> monopoly grants they hold, I very much doubt they'd have the paper
>>> wealth they have now (and the computing landscape would likely be quite
>>
>>
>>
>> The customers would have to pay less, so the money only ends up in
>> other places. Maybe we would have much more IT deployment?
>
>
> IT deployment would have been more centralized. Software would have
> been kept secret, on servers located away from the customers.
I don't believe that. Apart from people like Richard Stallman,
there are organizations (founded by several corporations,
obviously not for charity purposes) like Apache. Even without
copyrights, companies would have recognized the need for
cooperation and sharing of work to be competitive.
If a software is locked up, or if it is just copyrighted and
closed source, doesn't make a difference in my eyes.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <upsw5pa27.fsf@nhplace.com>
David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> writes:
> Kent M Pitman wrote:
>
> > David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> writes:
> >
> >> You may bluster about losing the opportunity to sell people
> >> copy after copy of the software and rake in the dough: but that
> >> opportunity really only exists if you presuppose copyright law
> >> exists.
> >
> > No, it doesn't exist at all.
>
> Then you've got nothing to lose if you didn't have copyright law, eh?
>
> But I would differ there: Successful proprietary software companies are
> a clear counterexample. Without the copyright and lately patent
> monopoly grants they hold, I very much doubt they'd have the paper
> wealth they have now
I personally think this just shows that the market is a constant approximation
to some number of digits, and capable of needing more time to settle. I don't
see how you can look at individual data points and say they can't happen just
because they have lessened probability. (Maybe you don't mean to say that, but
that's what I took from the above.)
It's very hard to have something that makes money forever and doesn't get
competition.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> I personally think this just shows that the market is a constant
> approximation
> to some number of digits, and capable of needing more time to settle.
> I don't see how you can look at individual data points and say they
> can't happen just
> because they have lessened probability. (Maybe you don't mean to say
> that, but that's what I took from the above.)
>
I don't think that's quite what I was saying. I said I doubted (I doubt
=> I regard as unlikely => I think the probability is lessened) they
would have the paper wealth they have now. If you think the market is
approximating to a particular point/locus, in my opinion copyright law
is shifting that point to allow the existence, even profitability, of
proprietary software developers. Conversely, without copyright law,
that distortion from a free market would likely no longer be present
(though I myself would expect that some binary-only software companies
would still be very profitable even if they couldn't assert copyright
and patent privileges over or prevent reverse engineering of binaries
after they released them)
While if you're a proprietary software developer, particularly one of
the few who writes more software than he uses, the existance of
copyright law _might_ be economically advantageous for you if you're
unwilling to change career, I would certainly question whether it's a
good thing macro-economically. And economy is not all there is in life
anyway. As far as I'm concerned, the abridgement of liberty caused by
copyright law far outweighs any economic advantage real or perceived to
any party.
> It's very hard to have something that makes money forever and doesn't
> get competition.
Well, certainly - if nothing else, copyright and patent monopolies do
eventually expire, "They" haven't quite managed to make them infinitely
renewable yet, though the USA is tending that way (see Eldred v.
Ashcroft).
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u8y2tgqer.fsf@nhplace.com>
David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> writes:
> > It's very hard to have something that makes money forever and doesn't
> > get competition.
>
> Well, certainly - if nothing else, copyright and patent monopolies do
> eventually expire,
If you have a server model, your process is protected by trade secret.
That doesn't expire. So this doesn't exhaust the space of monopolies.
Ultimately, though, I think the mere thirst for money is what causes
someone to build an equivalent system and bring you down when you do this.
> "They" haven't quite managed to make them infinitely renewable yet,
> though the USA is tending that way (see Eldred v. Ashcroft).
Yeah. Sigh...
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> writes:
>
>> > It's very hard to have something that makes money forever and
>> > doesn't get competition.
>>
>> Well, certainly - if nothing else, copyright and patent monopolies do
>> eventually expire,
>
> If you have a server model, your process is protected by trade secret.
> That doesn't expire. So this doesn't exhaust the space of monopolies.
>
Well, trade secret law is vaguely (note I mean in a woolly conceptual
sense, not wholly accurately) somewhat mappable to physical property
law over the substrate upon which the information pattern regarded as
secret is impressed: to find out trade secret contents of the server
directly (as opposed to legitimate reverse
engineering/protocol-decode), I'd probably need to violate your
physical property anyway, unless you weren't protecting your trade
secret adequately enough to qualify indisputably for trade secret
status. As physical items are truly scarce (for the moment), I don't
argue against property rights over physical items.
And trade secrets are lost once the cat gets out of the bag (including
by legitimate reverse engineering - Aside: in my opinion the techniques
of reverse engineering are so mature now that I think using disclosure
of information that would otherwise be trade secret as one argument for
patents has become invalid). So I have less of a beef with them,
somewhat similar to the way I'm less worried about trademarks.
Maybe my opinion here would be: "total freedom of information including
the freedom not to have to disclose information" i.e. you shouldn't be
able to demand secret information of me and get it, but if you happen
to find out said secret information, you shouldn't be penalised for
knowing it or passing it on, only for using that knowledge to cause me
harm. This could apply to credit card numbers, passwords, whatever.
Whether you should be obliged to disclose to me that you had come to
know information that would be considered secret by me or a reasonable
person I'm not so sure on, maybe some sort of potential for harm thing
would need to come in, but I'm vary wary of putting "potential" stuff
in laws of my imaginary state. :-)
Note also that I presently am undecided about but veering towards
allowing ordinary contract law applied to information transmission: if
you want to require a confidentiality agreement contract with a
customer to maintain some continued secret status before issuing a
binary to the customer, say, I'm not sure that should be any particular
skin off my nose, so long as your remedy is under that contract against
that customer rather than against me if I happen to find out the
information because the customer breached confidentiality.
> Ultimately, though, I think the mere thirst for money is what causes
> someone to build an equivalent system and bring you down when you do
> this.
>
Not always. Silly hypothetical (and look, I'm mentioning lisp!): I
might be inclined to write my own mutant lisp implementation some time
just to experiment with "composite symbols" and aspects of parallelism.
I would consider it invalid to assert that experimentation would be
motivated by eventual expectation of monetary profit, it would be
straightforward curiosity. I might even be inclined to release the
code to others, just to see what they make of it. It might end up
equivalently useful and a competitor to other lisps: but it would not
have been my goal to make money.
This echoes Linus Torvalds quip:
"""
To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy something, don't
you? Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a
completely unintentional side effect.
"""
>> "They" haven't quite managed to make them infinitely renewable yet,
>> though the USA is tending that way (see Eldred v. Ashcroft).
>
> Yeah. Sigh...
Recent US actions are certainly unfortunate and damaging to the cause of
people who want what they describe as "reasonable" copyright: While
I would tend to hold there is no baby, the overextension of copyright
law has led to great support for dumping both baby (assumed) and
bathwater. Even I could probably stomach a 7 or even 14 year copyright
term, though I'd likely grumble. Nigh on a century or so is ridiculous.
David Golden wrote:
>
>> Ultimately, though, I think the mere thirst for money is what causes
>> someone to build an equivalent system and bring you down when you do
>> this.
>>
>
> Not always.
Oops. I realise upon re-reading your "this" presumably specifically
applied to the case of someone building an
equivalent server. and my lisp hypothetical was therefore irrelevant -
my bad [Excuse time: It's 3:00am here, I'm only still awake because I'm
concerned about a contract issue at work].
None the less, there are situations in which I could see certainly
someone building an equivalent system to your server for non monetary
reasons: e.g. if monsanto buys google and you believe the google
server is now returning biased results in favour of broad patent rights
on living organisms and other horrible corporate nastiness, you might
build a substitutable service (to interpret equivalent broadly) to
return unbiased results (or more realistically, search results slanted
to you own ideological bias).
David Golden wrote:
okay, clearly time for bed, replying to my reply to my reply. Duh.
But a slightly less hypothetical and therefore somewhat more convincing
example along the same lines might be the establishment of lossmaking
indymedia etc. servers. They are substituting [somewhat] for other
online news servers, but the competition is ideologically, not
necessarily directly monetarily, motivated.
I just have to say, indymedia is a brilliant project. I was involved with
my local one for a couple of years.
I'll leave this thread to get back on (off?) topic again now :)
On Fri, 06 May 2005 03:16:46 +0100, David Golden wrote:
> David Golden wrote:
>
> okay, clearly time for bed, replying to my reply to my reply. Duh.
>
> But a slightly less hypothetical and therefore somewhat more convincing
> example along the same lines might be the establishment of lossmaking
> indymedia etc. servers. They are substituting [somewhat] for other online
> news servers, but the competition is ideologically, not necessarily
> directly monetarily, motivated.
David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> writes:
> This echoes Linus Torvalds quip:
> """
> To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy something, don't
> you? Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a
> completely unintentional side effect.
No, one can be a nemesis without actively trying to destroy
something else. If you pursue goals which are diametrically opposed
to someone else's, then you are their nemesis (whether they know it
or not) to the extent that you are successful in pursuing your
goals.
--jon
Jon Boone wrote:
> No, one can be a nemesis without actively trying to destroy
> something else.
Nemesis: the goddess of vengeance and retribution.
Mind you, modern usage may be looser, of course, but nemesis seems
to hold for me some sense of purposeful retribution.
All that aside, I think overanalysis of a throwaway joke by
Linus is silly.
David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> writes:
> Jon Boone wrote:
>> No, one can be a nemesis without actively trying to destroy
>> something else.
>
>
> Nemesis: the goddess of vengeance and retribution.
>
> Mind you, modern usage may be looser, of course, but nemesis seems
> to hold for me some sense of purposeful retribution.
I would presume you don't actually believe that Nemesis was an
extant entity. Therefore, Nemesis didn't actually these
characteristics which have been ascribed to her. Rather, she was a
scapegoat on which ill fortune was blamed.
Linus (or anyone else) can be the Nemesis to another party without
having any purposeful intentions of retribution or vengance. The
"aggrieved party" only has to perceive those qualities for the
relationship to hold.
> All that aside, I think overanalysis of a throwaway joke by
> Linus is silly.
I was responding to you, not him. You seemed to think it was
apropos. Whether he was joking or not, the statement is wrong.
Perhaps you can see how this has an impact on what you had written
in the paragraph immediately prior to this (presumed) joke.
For your convenience, I've included your previous statement:
> Not always. Silly hypothetical (and look, I'm mentioning lisp!): I
> might be inclined to write my own mutant lisp implementation some
> time just to experiment with "composite symbols" and aspects of
> parallelism. I would consider it invalid to assert that
> experimentation would be motivated by eventual expectation of
> monetary profit, it would be straightforward curiosity. I might
> even be inclined to release the code to others, just to see what
> they make of it. It might end up equivalently useful and a
> competitor to other lisps: but it would not have been my goal to
> make money.
My point to you was that one's relationships with others are not
defined solely in terms of your intentions regarding that
relationship. The fact that you don't intend to make money doesn't
mean:
a. you won't, and
b. that you won't prevent others from doing so.
One should always be aware of the law of unintended consequences.
Far too many people with "good intentions" have screwed things up
for failing to understand this.
It may assuage an otherwise guilty conscience to say "I didn't
*intend* for that to happen", but it's rather pathetically useless
to those who are left to suffer the consequences.
--jon
Jon Boone wrote:
> I would presume you don't actually believe that Nemesis was an
> extant entity. Therefore, Nemesis didn't actually these
> characteristics which have been ascribed to her. Rather, she was a
> scapegoat on which ill fortune was blamed.
>
Sigh. Most "Nemesis" common usage I have encountered around here anyway
tends to involve the entity the label is applied to being considered to
be acting like Nemesis would against some other entity. Not this this
has much to do with lisp.
e.g. published by a news organisation in the recent past, in the build
up to a general election in a nearby country, Britain:
"The zero hour. Blair faces his nemesis, Michael Howard, over the
dispatch box. Could this be the end of the Blair project?"
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/flash/politics_24spoof.swf
(as it's a flash piece of political satire, it's a bit annoying
to find that quote, but it IS in there, just click the play button
a few times then the picture of michael howard).
If you've been following the recent election in Britain, you'd know
Howard had NOT been just out to win the election on the (heh) strength
of conservative party's immigration policies or whatever, he was
definitely actively targetting Blair (or Bliar, as many prefer, given
his track record...) by dredging up inconvenient history of Blair's
deceptions (but the conservative party was depressingly ham-fisted
about it, so Howard wasn't a very effective nemesis- it's not like
there was a dearth of material, yet Blair and his spin doctors
still pulled ahead...)
> Far too many people with "good intentions" have screwed things up
> for failing to understand this.
>
I understand this, but note that "screwing things up" is relative too
though - I'd hardly consider I'd screwed things up if an unintended
consequence of my actions happened to prevent a slaver from profiting
through slavery, though the slaver might. What makes you think I would
consider something "screwed up" if I unintentionally prevented a
copyright holder from profiting through copyright law? The copyright
holder might, but hey, he's a copyright holder!
> It may assuage an otherwise guilty conscience to say "I didn't
> *intend* for that to happen", but it's rather pathetically useless
> to those who are left to suffer the consequences.
>
It is significantly different, unless e.g. you also consider murder vs.
manslaughter to be a distinction without difference (and most people
round here consider them to be different. In america they say "first
degree murder" and "second degree murder" or something like that
though, don't they, perhaps suggesting americans see less of a
difference in that particular case).
David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> writes:
> If you've been following the recent election in Britain,
Not closely, as it seemed a lock-up for Blair and "New Labor". If
anything, it seemed that Blair might face some challenges within
Labor itself.
> you'd know Howard had NOT been just out to win the election on the
> (heh) strength of conservative party's immigration policies or
> whatever, he was definitely actively targetting Blair (or Bliar, as
> many prefer, given his track record...) by dredging up inconvenient
> history of Blair's deceptions (but the conservative party was
> depressingly ham-fisted about it, so Howard wasn't a very effective
> nemesis- it's not like there was a dearth of material, yet Blair
> and his spin doctors still pulled ahead...)
Howard only qualifies as the nemsis of the Conservative Party, if
the campaign results are indicative at all. Has Howard yet
resigned? (He *really* ought to, you know). How they failed to
capitalize on the opportunity handed to them, I can not say. How
can Labor still have a majority?
>> Far too many people with "good intentions" have screwed things up
>> for failing to understand this.
>
> I understand this, but note that "screwing things up" is relative
> too though
I note that people have differing opinions as to what "screwing
things up" might mean. What I mean by it is that people of nominally
good intentions end up "screwing things up" (according to their own
stated aims and goals).
>> It may assuage an otherwise guilty conscience to say "I didn't
>> *intend* for that to happen", but it's rather pathetically useless
>> to those who are left to suffer the consequences.
>>
> It is significantly different, unless e.g. you also consider murder
> vs. manslaughter to be a distinction without difference (and most
> people round here consider them to be different.
Personally, lacking privileged access to another person's
intentions, which I grant that they have about their own intentions,
I find that distinction to be irrelevant. However, I believe that I
am in the minority on this one.
> In america they say "first degree murder" and "second degree
> murder" or something like that though, don't they, perhaps
> suggesting americans see less of a difference in that particular
> case).
It varies. Sometimes it's called Murder, sometimes Manslaughter.
Generally, though, it's 3 degrees of culpability (I forget all those
lovely latin words they use):
1 is you did it with full knowledge of the consequences and with
intention to do so.
2 is that you did it and you knew the consequences, but didn't
have the intention.
3 is that you did it but didn't know the consequences and didn't
have the intention. The expectation is that you *should* have
been able to know the consequences.
Having served on an actual jury, I have to say that I lack
confidence in my fellow Americans' ability to judge intentionality -
or to behave rationally in the face of their conclusion that they
*have* ascertained said intentionality.
--jon
Jon Boone wrote:
> Has Howard yet resigned?
He announced he would be doing so, anyway.
> How can Labor still have a majority?
I guess the other candidates really sucked too. Shame the British don't
seem to put their beloved-in-student-elections "RON" (re-open
nominations (usually one would vote for RON because all the candidates
are useless tossers)) in elections that actually matter.
Labour have very close ties to the popular media, particularly Sky (Fox
smartened up for Britain/Ireland, probably more dangerous than Fox in
some ways because they are less blatant about their propaganda than
Fox).
> It varies. Sometimes it's called Murder, sometimes Manslaughter.
> Generally, though, it's 3 degrees of culpability (I forget all those
> lovely latin words they use):
>
Ah. my understanding of such aspects of american law is fairly limited,
and probably heavily distorted by american-law-as-portrayed-on-tv,
which is (I _really_ hope) sensationalised.
David Golden <············@oceanfree.net> writes:
> While if you're a proprietary software developer, particularly one of
> the few who writes more software than he uses,
I bet it'd be hard to find such a software developer. Just going out
to drink a beer at the closest bar, any software developer must be
using, directly and indirectly more than a hundred of different
software, and not trivial ones, from the software in the lift, in the
door control, in the taxi engine, in the taxi CB, at the taxi base at
least half a dozen software (managing taxies, accounting, pay,
billings, etc), in the semaphores, at the bar (stock management,
invoices, accountings, salaries, POS, the TV remote and the TV in the
bar, etc), at the brewery, (industrial control, stocks, accounting,
etc), at the beer transporter's, at the IRS, etc.
Of couse one could go back 160 years ago, but then Lady Lovelace was
the _only_ programmer in town, and she used only pen and paper.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
In deep sleep hear sound,
Cat vomit hairball somewhere.
Will find in morning.
From: Pascal Bourguignon
Subject: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87ll6u4b4f.fsf_-_@thalassa.informatimago.com>
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> writes:
>> If people choose to use the software without paying for it
>> and without my being able to track them down then I don't get paid
>> and society lets me starve for not having contributed
>> in a way through which I was able to extract my livelihood.
>
> Then it's your fault for giving it away. You gave it away freely,
> remember? The question is why. And I frankly can't answer that for
> you, since I don't recommend you do it except to someone who doesn't
> have the means to pay.
How would you discriminate BSD license (or PD) from GPL license.
BSD licensed software can be used gratis by commercial entities that
would have (theorically for most, massively for some) the financial
means to buy a commercial competitor.
GPL licensed software, for its so called "viral" license features,
usually cannot be used by commercial entities (only for internal
software, but let's assume that the psychological brake on its use is
enough to prevent them using it even for internal software). GPL asks
for a non-monetary and indirect price.
Would you say that GPL is better than BSD in your view?
What about the existance of two "markets", the normal, monetary
market, where software are bought and sold and priced in dollars,
and the other market where the software are exchanged, "bartered"
against other GPL software?
If these two markets were tight (no BSD license and no PD), how would
you assess it?
Commercial entities are reticent on using GPL software, and GPL
converts are reticent on using commercial software (be it for
principles or for financial considerations). So these two markets are
almost independant, and I don't see that the presence of a couple of
GPL'ed OSes prevents Apple, Sun or Microsoft to sell their own OS.
Finally, remember that GPL is not a question of gratis, and that
commercial entities can always make an offter to the owner of a GPL'ed
software to buy him a commercial license for his software. More,
commercial entitites still have two advantages, if they want to
compete with free software: they can read the source, and they have
the resources to improve on it.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we. -- Georges W. Bush
From: Jon Boone
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3r7glwtkt.fsf@amicus.delamancha.org>
Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
> How would you discriminate BSD license (or PD) from GPL license.
>
> BSD licensed software can be used gratis by commercial entities
> that would have (theorically for most, massively for some) the
> financial means to buy a commercial competitor.
This is by design.
> GPL licensed software, for its so called "viral" license features,
> usually cannot be used by commercial entities (only for internal
> software, but let's assume that the psychological brake on its use is
> enough to prevent them using it even for internal software). GPL asks
> for a non-monetary and indirect price.
This is not true. Commercial companies *can* use GPL licensed
software, and have, for decades. The GPL's only direct negative
impact on a commercial entity occurs when they want to improve the
code-base, distribute the improved version and keep their
improvements secret.
NeXT used the Gnu Compiler Collection for their compilers decades
ago. (Which is how Objective-C support got added to GCC). Apple
continues to do so with Mac OS X. They not only distribute it with
their developer tools, but they continue to actively contribute
improvements for their target languages/chipsets.
Now, the indirect impact of the GPL is to reduce the fee that one
can charge for the resulting product. It's indirect because there
is no absolute guarantee that their will be an impact at all.
Consider, again, the case of Mac OS X. The kernel and majority
(all?) of the user-space Unix tools are open-source.
www.opendarwin.org is the repository for obtaining the relevant
source code. Yet, despite this, Apple manages to charge
approximately the same for an upgrade to Mac OS X as Microsoft does
for an upgrade to Windows. Why? Because Apple contributes
significant added value to their packaging of the freely available
software in the form of their libraries and applications.
> Would you say that GPL is better than BSD in your view?
I'll let Kent answer for himself, but it seems clear that they are
largely the same provided you don't intend to sell the program that
is itself licensed under the GPL. If that's your aim, then clearly
the BSD license is a "better deal".
Otherwise, I'd say that the choice you make regarding which
license to use depends more on who you want to attract as
contributors/users.
> What about the existance of two "markets", the normal, monetary
> market, where software are bought and sold and priced in dollars,
> and the other market where the software are exchanged, "bartered"
> against other GPL software?
A market where software is bought and sold and priced in
*local-currency* is not different (to any relevant degree) from a
market where software is exchanged against other GPL software,
except in this one factor: there is more liquidity in the
*local-currency* denominated market place.
When the only thing you have to contribute is your time, then that
limits the ability of the marketplace to grow in value. The only
way to increase the overall value of the marketplace is to increase
the size of it. Not impossible, but not cheap either.
A market where you had to trade GPL software for other GPL
software would probably not survive due to the fact that GPL
software is not (by design of the license) a scarce commodity.
This means that the supply quickly outstrips the demand and the
value rapidly heads toward zero. Markets only exist as a means of
exchanging scarce commodities.
Since there is no market for exchange of GPL software, it's either
sold (where the value add is typically the packaging) or given away.
It's also why there is an enormous free-rider population. (Whether
or not this constitutes a problem is the subject of a different
discussion).
If you want to discuss an exchange-based market that is
denominated in software titles, then you'd need to look at the
trafficing in "pirated software". When it was operated on private
BBSs, it worked like this: to download, you had to upload something
new first. There was a credit system where you got credits based on
a multiple of the bytes/files you uploaded. Once you used up your
credits, you had to provide something more to continue to
participate in the market. I'd not be surprised to find that it has
transplated itself to the Internet and continues to operate in
fundamentally the same way even today.
> If these two markets were tight (no BSD license and no PD), how
> would you assess it?
There is no way to sustain a market based on the exchange of GPL
software (which is why the GPL world is so "status" and "gift"
oriented in culture). So, the *local-currency* denominated market
is better for that reason alone. The fact that the (theoretical)
GPL software market is (relatively) non-liquid also loses.
> Commercial entities are reticent on using GPL software,
Many commercial entities *use* GPL software. A number of them use
it as the basis (or a component) of their products and services,
including Apple, IBM and Sun.
> and GPL converts are reticent on using commercial software (be it
> for principles or for financial considerations). So these two
> markets are almost independant,
Don't confuse the GPL-oriented (sub)culture with a market. It's
nothing of the sort.
> and I don't see that the presence of a couple of GPL'ed OSes
> prevents Apple, Sun or Microsoft to sell their own OS.
What additional OS is under the GPL aside from the countably
near-infinite derivations of Linux?
And note that Apple, Sun and Microsoft all at one time (and
possibly even today) use portions of BSD/MIT licensed software for
components of their software.
--jon
From: Robert Uhl
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3sm11zkvx.fsf@4dv.net>
Jon Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
>
> > and I don't see that the presence of a couple of GPL'ed OSes
> > prevents Apple, Sun or Microsoft to sell their own OS.
>
> What additional OS is under the GPL aside from the countably
> near-infinite derivations of Linux?
Well, there are:
o GNU HURD <http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html>
o AtheOS <http://www.atheos.cx/>
o SOSSE <http://www.mbsks.franken.de/sosse/>
o Syllable <http://www.syllable.org/>
I know that there are others, but those leapt to mind or were found with
a quick Googling...
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
Christos harjav i merelotz! Orhniale harutjun Christosi!
> This is not true. Commercial companies *can* use GPL licensed
> software, and have, for decades. The GPL's only direct negative
> impact on a commercial entity occurs when they want to improve the
> code-base, distribute the improved version and keep their
> improvements secret.
>
This is less restrictive than my understanding of the GPL. For example,
if I use the GNU readline library in my application (without
modifications), does that not require the application to be released
under the GPL?
I thought this is why CLisp was released under the GPL.
John DeSoi, Ph.D.
http://pgedit.com/
Power Tools for PostgreSQL
From: Pascal Bourguignon
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <874qdfzi0m.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>
John DeSoi <·····@pgedit.com> writes:
>> This is not true. Commercial companies *can* use GPL licensed
>> software, and have, for decades. The GPL's only direct negative
>> impact on a commercial entity occurs when they want to improve the
>> code-base, distribute the improved version and keep their
>> improvements secret.
>>
>
> This is less restrictive than my understanding of the GPL. For
> example, if I use the GNU readline library in my application (without
> modifications), does that not require the application to be released
> under the GPL?
Yes, but only if you want to distribute the application.
Most enterprise software is not distributed but used in-house.
> I thought this is why CLisp was released under the GPL.
>
>
> John DeSoi, Ph.D.
> http://pgedit.com/
> Power Tools for PostgreSQL
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
You're always typing.
Well, let's see you ignore my
sitting on your hands.
Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
>>> This is not true. Commercial companies *can* use GPL licensed
>>> software, and have, for decades. The GPL's only direct negative
>>> impact on a commercial entity occurs when they want to improve the
>>> code-base, distribute the improved version and keep their
>>> improvements secret.
>>>
>>
>>This is less restrictive than my understanding of the GPL. For
>>example, if I use the GNU readline library in my application (without
>>modifications), does that not require the application to be released
>>under the GPL?
>
>
> Yes, but only if you want to distribute the application.
> Most enterprise software is not distributed but used in-house.
Yes, I understand the point about distribution. But the original quote
seemed to imply that GPL software could be used and distributed without
"negative impact" as long as the GPL software was not modified. The
"negative impact" implied has no dependency on modification of the GPL
source. The company cannot keep any of the source in the public
distribution proprietary if they use GPL components.
John DeSoi, Ph.D.
http://pgedit.com/
Power Tools for PostgreSQL
From: Jon Boone
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m37jiag3gv.fsf@amicus.delamancha.org>
John DeSoi <·····@pgedit.com> writes:
> I wrote:
>> This is not true. Commercial companies *can* use GPL licensed
>> software, and have, for decades. The GPL's only direct negative
>> impact on a commercial entity occurs when they want to improve the
>> code-base, distribute the improved version and keep their
>> improvements secret.
>>
>
> This is less restrictive than my understanding of the GPL. For
> example, if I use the GNU readline library in my application
> (without modifications), does that not require the application to
> be released under the GPL?
First, as Pascal comments in his follow-up, if you don't
distribute the application at all, then you have no requirement to
do so under the GPL. Much corporate software is developed and
retained in-house.
Secondly, don't overlook the semantic slight of hand. In the GPL
world-view, if you include code licensed under the GPL in an
application, you *are* improving the source base of the GPL-licensed
code (i.e. your code is an improvement to theirs, not vice versa).
This is a slight of hand because it isn't dependent on the relative
proportion of GPL-licenced to original code.
But, despite this "viral" aspect, companies *do* spend their hard
earned capital on improving GPL-licensed code, even making them the
basis of their product offerings.
--jon
From: David Trudgett
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3u0left5v.fsf@rr.trudgett>
Jon Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> Secondly, don't overlook the semantic slight of hand. In the GPL
> world-view, if you include code licensed under the GPL in an
> application, you *are* improving the source base of the GPL-licensed
> code (i.e. your code is an improvement to theirs, not vice versa).
> This is a slight of hand because it isn't dependent on the relative
> proportion of GPL-licenced to original code.
I don't think it is fair to label this as "semantic slight of hand"
because it is no such thing. What it is, is the GPLers saying that
they do not want their efforts to go into supporting non-Free
software, even just a little bit. This is a completely fair position
to take and is not slight of hand in any sense at all.
What people [I'm not talking about you, Jon] generally mean when they
bring up this issue, which they call "viral" (as you note), is that
they are peeved that they are prevented from using other people's
software in any way they wish, contrary to the desires of the
author. This position is irrational on the part of the proprietary
software developers, because it would mean that they should also be
peeved that others are prevented from using their proprietary software
in any way they wish (such as distributing copies at no charge, or
taking their source code and placing it in Free Software). Of course,
they are not so peeved, and are therefore taking an irrational
position vis a vis Free Software.
>
> But, despite this "viral" aspect, companies *do* spend their hard
> earned capital on improving GPL-licensed code, even making them the
> basis of their product offerings.
On the subject of "GPL-licensed code", it is interesting to note that
the GPL is not a use, but a (perfectly legal) subversion of copyright
law. Copyright law was not created to give people freedoms, but to
take them away, in a misguided attempt to promote the publishing of
works. Yet, the GPL's purpose is to ensure that created software
remains free and is unable to be "embraced and conquered" by
proprietary software developers, as is possible with "public domain"
software. In that sense, the GPL has been very successful: it has
achieved that aim remarkably well.
Of course, the GPL *does* [1] take away people's freedom to make Free
Software unfree, and it does this through a mechanism that is, at the
very least, considered extremely distasteful by the GPLers
themselves. You see, while there is nothing inherently immoral about
the concept of "copyright" itself (which is simply an assertion by the
author about what the author wants or doesn't want done with the
work), what *is* immoral is the use of armed force (violence, in other
words) against those who choose not to follow the author's
wishes. This, by the way, is why both the state and the legal system
are inherently immoral: they rely for their very existence [2] on
individuals (police, soldiers, executioners, jurors, judges, and so
on) who are willing to inflict violence upon others.
So, GPLers, in making use of copyright, are using a weapon that only
works because other people believe in it [3]. GPLers, such as myself and
Richard Stallman, to name two, who are GPLers because of philosophical
beliefs and not for pragmatic reasons, ironically do not believe in
the only thing standing in the way of legally obliterating the
existence of Free Software. Funny, eh? Of course, Stallman is also a
pragmatic person, and is therefore, as I understand, committed to
having to defend the GPL in court if need be, however distasteful that
may be to him personally.
It is also interesting to note upon what the proprietary software
developer's business model is based. It is based upon only one thing:
the willingness to throw into jail (with any necessary concommitant
violence) any person who disregards the author's wishes regarding
distribution and copying. This means that the business model is based
upon violence as the only mechanism to guarantee its viability. Now,
not everyone is against violence, obviously, especially when it's
directed towards someone who isn't themself or their family, but for
someone calling themself "Christian" [4] to utilise that business
model is nothing but hypocritical and contemptible. [5]
David
[1] Actually, I'm speaking loosely here. The GPL does no such
thing. It is the threat of violence (or actual violence) brought about
via the tool of the legal system that takes away freedom. The GPL is
just a bunch of words.
[2] Actually, I'm speaking loosely here. The "state" and the "law" do
not exist at all, but are simply concepts that people carry around in
their head.
[3] Similar to many things in life, as a matter of fact: like the
"state", the "law", "property" (as distinct from personal
possessions).
[4] Which many of us are, including myself. Similar, though not
identical, statements apply to other religions, of course, such as
Buddhism.
[5] But, of course, many of these Christians are, through no great
fault of their own, completely oblivious to this hypocrisy. This is
even often true after the hypocrisy has been pointed out to them. Such
is the strength of social conditioning.
--
David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/
"Come, now, suppose your father were arrested and tried to make his
escape?" I asked a young soldier.
"I should run him through with my bayonet," he answered with the
foolish intonation peculiar to soldiers; "and if he made off, I ought
to shoot him," he added, obviously proud of knowing what he must do if
his father were escaping.
-- Leo Tolstoy, "The Kingdom of God is Within You"
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e5ae3F19pvpU1@news.dfncis.de>
David Trudgett <······@zeta.org.au.nospamplease> wrote:
>Of course, the GPL *does* [1] take away people's freedom to make Free
>Software unfree, and it does this through a mechanism that is, at the
Can I have Freedom Fries with that?
There're entirely too many "free" in that sentence coupled with
the GPL for me to stomach.
Just a simple example: If I make a program and distribute it under
a BSD or MIT-style copyright, or the famous Beer-Ware-license, or
even as public domain, it surely is considered Free Software.
However, I am not allowed to link it against, say, the Readline
library. The GPL doesn't even seem to allow for the case that
Readline could be used as long as the software which links against
is stays open-source. No, it MUST infect the software which uses
it with exactly the same GPL license aswell. That's completely
inacceptable, imho. It's a major PITA and, of course, causes me
to not use the Readline library because I won't be forced by the
Readline developers to use their licensing style just because they
think they can bully me. It's not the commercial software producers
who're hit by the GPL, it's fellow free software developers who get
shown the stinking finger. In the end effect, we'll have another
reinvention of the wheel. Where non-GPL free software developers
write clones of GPL software just so that one can use the same
functionality in non-GPL free software. That's idiotic but thanks
to the FSF's policy of strict non-cooperation, it is a necessity.
mkb.
From: Pascal Bourguignon
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <8764xuxv7d.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> David Trudgett <······@zeta.org.au.nospamplease> wrote:
>
>>Of course, the GPL *does* [1] take away people's freedom to make Free
>>Software unfree, and it does this through a mechanism that is, at the
>
> Can I have Freedom Fries with that?
>
> There're entirely too many "free" in that sentence coupled with
> the GPL for me to stomach.
>
> Just a simple example: If I make a program and distribute it under
> a BSD or MIT-style copyright, or the famous Beer-Ware-license, or
> even as public domain, it surely is considered Free Software.
> However, I am not allowed to link it against, say, the Readline
> library. The GPL doesn't even seem to allow for the case that
> Readline could be used as long as the software which links against
> is stays open-source. No, it MUST infect the software which uses
> it with exactly the same GPL license aswell. That's completely
> inacceptable, imho. It's a major PITA and, of course, causes me
> to not use the Readline library because I won't be forced by the
> Readline developers to use their licensing style just because they
> think they can bully me. It's not the commercial software producers
> who're hit by the GPL, it's fellow free software developers who get
> shown the stinking finger. In the end effect, we'll have another
> reinvention of the wheel. Where non-GPL free software developers
> write clones of GPL software just so that one can use the same
> functionality in non-GPL free software. That's idiotic but thanks
> to the FSF's policy of strict non-cooperation, it is a necessity.
Bit the bullet! You're just jalous of the wonderfull readline
library. If you don't want to license the software you distribute
under GPL, just Write your own readline!
"Free" in "Free Software Fundation" HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GRATIS!
But with FREEDOM. You are FREE to choose to distribute your software
under GPL or not. But here is the COST: if you want to use GPL
software, you must PAY, giving your sources!
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Nobody can fix the economy. Nobody can be trusted with their finger
on the button. Nobody's perfect. VOTE FOR NOBODY.
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e5j6dF1a588U1@news.dfncis.de>
Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> wrote:
>Bit the bullet! You're just jalous of the wonderfull readline
>library. If you don't want to license the software you distribute
>under GPL, just Write your own readline!
As a matter of fact, I don't find readline particularly wonderful.
It was just an example. Like most Gnu software, it's helplessly
misdesigned. Ever tried to use readline in an event-driven
environment? I've looked into that a couple years ago and at least
then it wouldn't work since turning readline from "only return until
you've read a whole line from the terminal" into a "I supply you
keystrokes and you do the editing stuff" was near impossible. I
ended up writing my own "readline" subset, it wasn't much work
anyways.
>"Free" in "Free Software Fundation" HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GRATIS!
>But with FREEDOM. You are FREE to choose to distribute your software
>under GPL or not. But here is the COST: if you want to use GPL
>software, you must PAY, giving your sources!
That's nonsense. The FSF aims at becoming a monopoly. The FSF is
the Microsoft of the free software world and Chairman Stallman is
as fanatic and zealous with his control fetish as Mr. Gates.
Thankfully the FSF doesn't have a trademark on the term "free
software".. yet.
mkb.
From: Greg Menke
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3br7mymwb.fsf@athena.pienet>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> David Trudgett <······@zeta.org.au.nospamplease> wrote:
>
> >Of course, the GPL *does* [1] take away people's freedom to make Free
> >Software unfree, and it does this through a mechanism that is, at the
>
> Can I have Freedom Fries with that?
>
> There're entirely too many "free" in that sentence coupled with
> the GPL for me to stomach.
>
> Just a simple example: If I make a program and distribute it under
> a BSD or MIT-style copyright, or the famous Beer-Ware-license, or
> even as public domain, it surely is considered Free Software.
> However, I am not allowed to link it against, say, the Readline
> library. The GPL doesn't even seem to allow for the case that
> Readline could be used as long as the software which links against
> is stays open-source. No, it MUST infect the software which uses
> it with exactly the same GPL license aswell. That's completely
> inacceptable, imho. It's a major PITA and, of course, causes me
> to not use the Readline library because I won't be forced by the
> Readline developers to use their licensing style just because they
> think they can bully me. It's not the commercial software producers
> who're hit by the GPL, it's fellow free software developers who get
> shown the stinking finger. In the end effect, we'll have another
> reinvention of the wheel. Where non-GPL free software developers
> write clones of GPL software just so that one can use the same
> functionality in non-GPL free software. That's idiotic but thanks
> to the FSF's policy of strict non-cooperation, it is a necessity.
>
I don't have much sympathy for you. The GPL terms are spelled out very
clearly. If you're not willing to accept them, then you are free to not
use GPL software. Your convienence is not of concern. You are not
being bullied because you are not being forced to use or not use GPL
code- its entirely your choice. Will you also complain about software
you have to pay royalties on for every copy you sell, or is this simply
because the GPL annoys you?
If you dislike using the word "free", then simply release the source
with your program, then the GPL is satisfied and we can all get on with
more important ranting and raving.
Gregm
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e6g44F1e4ucU1@news.dfncis.de>
Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> wrote:
>code- its entirely your choice. Will you also complain about software
>you have to pay royalties on for every copy you sell, or is this simply
>because the GPL annoys you?
>If you dislike using the word "free", then simply release the source
>with your program, then the GPL is satisfied and we can all get on with
>more important ranting and raving.
I accept the copying terms of a developer for a certain piece of
software, of course. I don't complain about that. Everyone can
of course decide how his works shall be used. What I object to is
the hijacking and spinning of the word "free" that the GPL (and the
FSF) embodies. GPL software is not as "free" as, say, public domain
software. The degree of freedom is determined by the scope in which
the software can be used. Certainly the GPL restricts here a lot
more than other "free software" licenses, or even public domain.
It is this perverted hypocrisy which disturbs me. Speaking about
"freedom" and acting restriction. GPL software isn't any more free
than your average proprietary software is. That it comes with
source-code is a nice bonus but doesn't really add to its "freeness"
since the source code won't help you if the license doesn't allow
you to even have a closer look at it, lest you potentially spoil
your own work.
mkb.
From: Andreas Krey
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <slrnd7s3gf.ohn.a.krey@inner.h.uberluser.org>
* Matthias Buelow (···@incubus.de)
...
> It is this perverted hypocrisy which disturbs me. Speaking about
> "freedom" and acting restriction.
...ensuring that it is not sold into slavery, so to speak.
> GPL software isn't any more free
> than your average proprietary software is.
Oh. Microsoft don't mind if I actively pass (even sell) on
install CDs? That new to me.
> That it comes with
> source-code is a nice bonus but doesn't really add to its "freeness"
> since the source code won't help you if the license doesn't allow
> you to even have a closer look at it, lest you potentially spoil
> your own work.
You're intermixing with the conditions under which Sun lets (or did let)
you see the java implementation sources. Those actually hindered you to
produce a 'cleanroom' VM implementation, but reading readline.c does not
disallow you to do a rewrite.
Andreas
--
np: 4'33
From: Ulrich Hobelmann
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e6s5fF1guhjU1@individual.net>
Andreas Krey wrote:
>>GPL software isn't any more free
>>than your average proprietary software is.
>
>
> Oh. Microsoft don't mind if I actively pass (even sell) on
> install CDs? That new to me.
They mind, but there's nothing they can do to prevent you from
selling your legally obtained Windows license. You never agreed
to the EULA when buying it, so it Germany (and AFAIK the USA) the
EULA isn't really legal or enforceable.
Why shouldn't you be able to sell it? Because the EULA says, that
if you install and use the software and click on OK, you aren't
allowed to resell it? But you didn't click OK, did you?
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Andreas Krey
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <slrnd80pmk.kmk.a.krey@inner.h.uberluser.org>
* Ulrich Hobelmann (···········@web.de)
> Andreas Krey wrote:
>>>GPL software isn't any more free
>>>than your average proprietary software is.
>>
>>
>> Oh. Microsoft don't mind if I actively pass (even sell) on
>> install CDs? That new to me.
>
> They mind, but there's nothing they can do to prevent you from
> selling your legally obtained Windows license.
I was implicitly speaking of copies, just as the GPL allows
me to pass on and take money for that.
Andreas
--
np: 4'33
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e6iduF1f083U2@news.dfncis.de>
Andreas Krey <··········@gmx.de> wrote:
>> GPL software isn't any more free
>> than your average proprietary software is.
>
>Oh. Microsoft don't mind if I actively pass (even sell) on
>install CDs? That new to me.
The GPL enthusiast would say "free as in free speech, not as in
free beer". Being able to copy CDs is free beer. Being less
restricted than other software would then be the free speech
alternative. What I mean is that GPL software can only be used
with GPL software. That's proprietary for me. For added annoyance,
the GPL developers themselves are free to incorporate any less
restrictive software that they see fit (i.e., one-way "compatible"
licenses). If they were true to their cause, they would refuse to
incorporate such software, that would at least add some credibility.
But that wouldn't serve their master plan of building a monopoly.
Always take, never give, that's the dictum.
>You're intermixing with the conditions under which Sun lets (or did let)
>you see the java implementation sources. Those actually hindered you to
>produce a 'cleanroom' VM implementation, but reading readline.c does not
>disallow you to do a rewrite.
But you must make sure you don't "accidentally" copy a few lines
from the original source, even trivial stuff. Even if you didn't
intend to do so. Of course there's some latitude of interpretation
here.
mkb.
From: Robert Uhl
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m38y2ps8rb.fsf@4dv.net>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
>
> But that wouldn't serve their master plan of building a monopoly.
Not a monopoly: a commons. A commons of software, all of which can be
used together, and none of which will ever be used to deny users their
rights to examine, modify & redistribute.
As a (very small-time) programmer, I appreciate the fact that my work
will never be used in a proprietary product.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
This is the day which the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e7ks8F1k0suU1@news.dfncis.de>
Robert Uhl <······@spam4dv.net> wrote:
>Not a monopoly: a commons. A commons of software, all of which can be
>used together, and none of which will ever be used to deny users their
>rights to examine, modify & redistribute.
What's "a commons"? I don't know the word and haven't found it in
the dictionary either.
Whatever the "commons" is, it is for sure an exclusive "commons",
instead of an inclusive one, as the name would suggest. A significant
part of the free software world neither likes nor uses the GPL.
There will never be a GPL license monopoly, or "commons", in the
free software world, simply because a large part of any group always
prefers a more heterogenous segmentation which provides alternatives
to a One Commune, One License, One Leader -style autocracy. So
while the GPL developers are often free to unscrupulously plunder
the works of other free software developers, the reverse is not
true. Instead of cooperation, the GPL provokes confrontation. Not
the advancement of software in general but personal motives by
Stallman et. al. have priority. That's a sad thing.
>As a (very small-time) programmer, I appreciate the fact that my work
>will never be used in a proprietary product.
The GPL doesn't guarantee this.
mkb.
From: Pascal Bourguignon
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87acn5w89s.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> What's "a commons"? I don't know the word and haven't found it in
> the dictionary either.
It's a tragedy.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=tragedy+of+commons
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
The world will now reboot. don't bother saving your artefacts.
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e7to2F1l1ffU1@news.dfncis.de>
Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> wrote:
>Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
>> What's "a commons"? I don't know the word and haven't found it in
>> the dictionary either.
>
>It's a tragedy.
>
>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=tragedy+of+commons
Hmm, ok.. it's plural. A `common' is indeed lexicalized.
mkb.
From: Robert Marlow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <pan.2005.05.08.19.30.47.811902@bobturf.org>
I've been thinking about a sort of combined license like MySQL's. It seems
to me that the way to make both the free software and commercial industry
happy is to provide two licenses. If you're a hacker or casual user, you
get the GPL license while if you're a commercial entity you must
use the license which allows bundling providing source but you must also
pay money for it. Surely in this way both groups are able to pay in the
form that they prefer.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e7jrlF1jin3U1@news.dfncis.de>
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> wrote:
>I've been thinking about a sort of combined license like MySQL's. It seems
>to me that the way to make both the free software and commercial industry
>happy is to provide two licenses. If you're a hacker or casual user, you
>get the GPL license while if you're a commercial entity you must
>use the license which allows bundling providing source but you must also
>pay money for it. Surely in this way both groups are able to pay in the
>form that they prefer.
>Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?
And what about the non-GPL free software developers? They're the ones
who're left out in the cold?
If `exploitation by the capitalist vultures' or some such hypothetical
notion really has to be considered, I'd like to see the following:
A dual licensing concept; one version for commercial use, the other
for explicit (non-commercial | open-source) use.[1]
That way you can include the software in your non-commercial or
open-source stuff without having to infect it with the GPL, and if
someone wants to make a proprietary spinoff for selling, he can buy
a license.
[Trolltech does something like that with the Qt toolkit. The open
source license version is governed by alternatively the GPL or the
QPL (constructed by Troll for this purpose). The existence of the
QPL here as alternative to the GPL ensures that non-GPL open-source
non-commercial programs can link against Qt. Commercial non-GPL
programs need to buy a commercial license from Troll. This is a
bit complicated and from reading the QPL it seems that the use of
the GPL is redundant here; it's probably just included to appease
Stallman and the Slashdot crowd.]
Naturally it also depends on the type of program. I have no real
problems with gcc or ghostscript (the gnu release) being GPLed,
even though I use them daily. But they're large standalone programs.
For libraries, or other software that is likely to be used in
conjunction with new software, the problem is real and the situation
a whole lot different.
I'm kindof tired of these discussions, having read them for over
10 years. Surely the ultimate goal of all enthusiast software
developers must be to create the best possible software and make
that available to as many people as possible, in order to, you know,
advance humanity and create a better world, etc.? In order to
achieve this, software licenses should be as liberal as possible,
so they can be used and reused by amateur and professional users
alike, so the software achieves maximum distribution and usage.
Do the UCB people who wrote the Berkeley ftp(1) program bite their
arse every day just because Microsoft includes it in Windows XP?
I guess they either don't care, or are proud that their program
still has such a high utility after many years for it to be included
in a mainstream OS. (And btw., Microsoft is even playing by the
rules, and displays appropriate credits as mandated by the old
4-clause Berkeley license in their release documentation for the
software that they included, like the Berkeley stuff, and some newer
libraries that they use.)
mkb.
[1] Of course it can be just non-commercial, or just open-source,
or both, according to what the author likes.
From: lin8080
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <427FF082.363FD1BF@freenet.de>
Matthias Buelow schrieb:
> A dual licensing concept; one version for commercial use, the other
> for explicit (non-commercial | open-source) use.[1]
> [1] Of course it can be just non-commercial, or just open-source,
> or both, according to what the author likes.
Hallo
There is also software, called beta.
Usualy most greater software gets some updates (to better support new
hardware) or some new features. But assume 20MB stuff from scratch, not
tested everywhere comes on the market. And when it was tested well, what
should happen with all beta versions? (maybe some errors are not relevat
for me, so I use the beta)
stefan
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3ea6ejF2210oU2@news.dfncis.de>
lin8080 wrote:
>
> Matthias Buelow schrieb:
>
>
>>A dual licensing concept; one version for commercial use, the other
>>for explicit (non-commercial | open-source) use.[1]
>
>
>>[1] Of course it can be just non-commercial, or just open-source,
>>or both, according to what the author likes.
>
>
> Hallo
>
> There is also software, called beta.
>
> Usualy most greater software gets some updates (to better support new
> hardware) or some new features. But assume 20MB stuff from scratch, not
> tested everywhere comes on the market. And when it was tested well, what
> should happen with all beta versions? (maybe some errors are not relevat
> for me, so I use the beta)
Sorry, I don't understand of what relevance that what you wrote is to
what I wrote.
mkb.
From: Morten Alver
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <d5nmvs$7eb$1@orkan.itea.ntnu.no>
> For added annoyance,
> the GPL developers themselves are free to incorporate any less
> restrictive software that they see fit (i.e., one-way "compatible"
> licenses). If they were true to their cause, they would refuse to
> incorporate such software, that would at least add some credibility.
> But that wouldn't serve their master plan of building a monopoly.
> Always take, never give, that's the dictum.
This is just silly. You can incorporate e.g. BSD software into GPL
software exactly because the BSD license allows it. The author(s)
presumably chose that license because they wanted to allow this and most
other uses. You seem to prefer full freedom rather than the restricted
one the GPL offers, so why would this be an "annoyance"?
--
Morten
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e9c2nF1spk6U1@news.dfncis.de>
Morten Alver <······@invalid.no> wrote:
>> For added annoyance,
>> the GPL developers themselves are free to incorporate any less
>> restrictive software that they see fit (i.e., one-way "compatible"
>> licenses). If they were true to their cause, they would refuse to
>> incorporate such software, that would at least add some credibility.
>> But that wouldn't serve their master plan of building a monopoly.
>> Always take, never give, that's the dictum.
>
>This is just silly. You can incorporate e.g. BSD software into GPL
>software exactly because the BSD license allows it. The author(s)
>presumably chose that license because they wanted to allow this and most
>other uses. You seem to prefer full freedom rather than the restricted
>one the GPL offers, so why would this be an "annoyance"?
The annoyance is that the GPL advocates loudmouthly proclaim "freedom"
while at the same time they act as freeloaders of the non-GPL free
software and don't give anything back. Of course they're allowed
to do that. If it is ethical to do it, is another issue.
mkb.
From: Pascal Bourguignon
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87ll6ov1sx.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Morten Alver <······@invalid.no> wrote:
>
>>> For added annoyance,
>>> the GPL developers themselves are free to incorporate any less
>>> restrictive software that they see fit (i.e., one-way "compatible"
>>> licenses). If they were true to their cause, they would refuse to
>>> incorporate such software, that would at least add some credibility.
>>> But that wouldn't serve their master plan of building a monopoly.
>>> Always take, never give, that's the dictum.
>>
>>This is just silly. You can incorporate e.g. BSD software into GPL
>>software exactly because the BSD license allows it. The author(s)
>>presumably chose that license because they wanted to allow this and most
>>other uses. You seem to prefer full freedom rather than the restricted
>>one the GPL offers, so why would this be an "annoyance"?
>
> The annoyance is that the GPL advocates loudmouthly proclaim "freedom"
> while at the same time they act as freeloaders of the non-GPL free
> software and don't give anything back. Of course they're allowed
> to do that. If it is ethical to do it, is another issue.
It's ethical, because it's the freedom of the users (the customers),
not of the corporations that is stressed. The FSF and the GNU project
were started to give the users the freedom to correct (and share
corrections of) crap software (and firmware!) that is sold. Of
course, to allow users the freedom to correct crappy software, you
have to remove the freedom of corporations to keep the source for
themselves.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Grace personified,
I leap into the window.
I meant to do that.
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e9o9lF1us3nU1@news.dfncis.de>
Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> wrote:
>> The annoyance is that the GPL advocates loudmouthly proclaim "freedom"
>> while at the same time they act as freeloaders of the non-GPL free
>> software and don't give anything back. Of course they're allowed
>> to do that. If it is ethical to do it, is another issue.
>
>It's ethical, because it's the freedom of the users (the customers),
>not of the corporations that is stressed. The FSF and the GNU project
>were started to give the users the freedom to correct (and share
>corrections of) crap software (and firmware!) that is sold. Of
What? The GPL doesn't apply to non-GPL software. Has the arrogance
of the GPL supremacists grown so huge in the meantime that they
assume it governs ALL software?
>course, to allow users the freedom to correct crappy software, you
>have to remove the freedom of corporations to keep the source for
>themselves.
You sound like Robin Hood. Apart from that, I couldn't see how
even the GPL could achieve that goal. Only a complete disappropriation
would accomplish this.
mkb.
From: Karl A. Krueger
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <d5okv7$283$1@baldur.whoi.edu>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> wrote:
> Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> wrote:
>>It's ethical, because it's the freedom of the users (the customers),
>>not of the corporations that is stressed. The FSF and the GNU project
>>were started to give the users the freedom to correct (and share
>>corrections of) crap software (and firmware!) that is sold. Of
>
> What? The GPL doesn't apply to non-GPL software. Has the arrogance
> of the GPL supremacists grown so huge in the meantime that they
> assume it governs ALL software?
As the value of the GPL commons increases, more people are likely to
find they can compete _better_ with others by producing GPLed software
(which can legally leverage that commons). So more and more GPLed
software will get produced and improved.
Or that's the idea, anyway.
An awful lot of people who want to sell operating systems for PCs find
that they do better to leverage GPLed software (the Linux kernel) than
to try to produce their own. As a result, Red Hat, IBM, Novell, and
other vendors contribute back to the GPL commons, making it yet more
valuable.
Likewise, a lot of people today who want to sell small-office telephone
systems seem to be getting the impression that leveraging the GPLed
commons (the Asterisk PBX software) helps them compete better than
writing their own PBX software. As a result, they contribute back to
the Asterisk distribution, making it more valuable.
When you're dealing with GPLed software, sharing is not altruism or
self-sacrifice (as it might be under BSD-style licenses). It is,
rather, good business -- it gains you access to a valuable pool of
software that you would otherwise not be allowed to incorporate into
your products.
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu> { s/example/whoi/ }
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3ea67cF2210oU1@news.dfncis.de>
Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> An awful lot of people who want to sell operating systems for PCs find
> that they do better to leverage GPLed software (the Linux kernel) than
> to try to produce their own. As a result, Red Hat, IBM, Novell, and
> other vendors contribute back to the GPL commons, making it yet more
> valuable.
The same is done with non-GPL OSes, especially in the appliance market.
That isn't an argument for or against Gnu stuff. Technical
considerations and the simple fact that those things can be had for zero
money is the key here. Apart from that, I don't consider the handful of
(successful) Linux vendors an "awful lot of people".
I'm not talking from a corporate point of view. I'd guess that indeed
many companies are either unaffected by GPL software because they simply
don't use, reuse or redistribute any, or actually can accomodate it to
some degree in some of their product lines. Of course that's a small
minority. What I however complain about is the effect on the free
software community. The GPL has its most destructive effect not on the
corporate world, as some of the more communistically inclined Gnu-ers
would like, but on the free software community, where it creates
trenches, inhibits growth and provokes confrontation instead of creating
cooperation (this sub-thread here bearing witness to the problem).
Non-GPL free software enthusiasts are the ones who're kicked in the
balls by the GPL, not the "big corporations". I wouldn't care if the
FSF renamed itself into Restrictive Monopoly Software Foundation, or
somesuch. That would be honest. And not incorporate any software but
that which has freely been placed under the GPL aswell. That would also
be honest. But it's this spinning of the terms "freedom" and "free
software", the associated propaganda hype unleashed onto gullible
followers, and at the same time the unscrupulous dumping of their own
"ethics" by just taking all that is legally available and placing it
under their restrictive license without giving anything back for it,
that infuriates people like me.
mkb.
From: Greg Menke
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3wtq8x7sq.fsf@athena.pienet>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Karl A. Krueger wrote:
>
> > An awful lot of people who want to sell operating systems for PCs find
> > that they do better to leverage GPLed software (the Linux kernel) than
> > to try to produce their own. As a result, Red Hat, IBM, Novell, and
> > other vendors contribute back to the GPL commons, making it yet more
> > valuable.
>
> The same is done with non-GPL OSes, especially in the appliance market.
> That isn't an argument for or against Gnu stuff. Technical
> considerations and the simple fact that those things can be had for zero
> money is the key here. Apart from that, I don't consider the handful of
> (successful) Linux vendors an "awful lot of people".
OK, so vxWorks in some way allows contributions back into its kernel
from its users? Not likely. I imagine Microsoft, IBM and Sun don't
incorporate user patches into their source trees either. vxWorks is
pretty much the biggest player in the embedded OS market unless you
meant something else by "appliance". But I'll also point out their
compiler toolchain is gcc, so they're directly benefitting from GPL
software- they won't get held hostage by a compiler company and they can
push their code generation agenda by participating in the gcc
development efforts. And that is a risk reduction all the way down the
chain to the end-users of embedded systems products built with vxWorks.
The "awful lot" of people are the customers of the Linux vendors getting
the benefits of GPL software, the vendors getting the benefit of a
reasonable OS kernel without having the expense of writing it
themselves. That allows lots of distributions to come and go, competing
on how well they meet user's needs.
> I'm not talking from a corporate point of view. I'd guess that indeed
> many companies are either unaffected by GPL software because they simply
> don't use, reuse or redistribute any, or actually can accomodate it to
> some degree in some of their product lines. Of course that's a small
> minority. What I however complain about is the effect on the free
> software community. The GPL has its most destructive effect not on the
> corporate world, as some of the more communistically inclined Gnu-ers
> would like, but on the free software community, where it creates
> trenches, inhibits growth and provokes confrontation instead of creating
> cooperation (this sub-thread here bearing witness to the problem).
How in heaven's name does free software inhibit growth and create
trenches? And without confrontation how do you think bad ideas and
designs are winnowed? Cooperation is great but sometimes its just not
good enough.
> Non-GPL free software enthusiasts are the ones who're kicked in the
> balls by the GPL, not the "big corporations". I wouldn't care if the
> FSF renamed itself into Restrictive Monopoly Software Foundation, or
> somesuch. That would be honest. And not incorporate any software but
> that which has freely been placed under the GPL aswell. That would also
> be honest. But it's this spinning of the terms "freedom" and "free
> software", the associated propaganda hype unleashed onto gullible
> followers, and at the same time the unscrupulous dumping of their own
> "ethics" by just taking all that is legally available and placing it
> under their restrictive license without giving anything back for it,
> that infuriates people like me.
I think you're acting a bit crazy over this issue. The FSF doesn't
"take" anything. Whatever software is released under the GPL enters the
"free software" domain- the FSF doesn't simply allocate it. By
incorporating GPL software in your work, you have accepted its terms
with full knowledge- similar to clicking on the "Accept" box in a
Windows install removes from Microsoft all liability about what the
Windows installation might destroy, corrupt and transmit to Internet
marketers. In both cases, if those possibilities are unacceptable, then
you can choose accordingly at the outset.
Gregm
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3eael5F22h83U1@news.dfncis.de>
Greg Menke wrote:
>>software community. The GPL has its most destructive effect not on the
>>corporate world, as some of the more communistically inclined Gnu-ers
>>would like, but on the free software community, where it creates
>>trenches, inhibits growth and provokes confrontation instead of creating
>>cooperation (this sub-thread here bearing witness to the problem).
>
>
> How in heaven's name does free software inhibit growth and create
> trenches? And without confrontation how do you think bad ideas and
Don't try to put words into my mouth. I said the GPL creates trenches
and inhibits growth. In the free software community.
> designs are winnowed? Cooperation is great but sometimes its just not
> good enough.
Technical confrontation is ok. Confrontation about policy is just
counter-productive.
> I think you're acting a bit crazy over this issue. The FSF doesn't
> "take" anything. Whatever software is released under the GPL enters the
> "free software" domain- the FSF doesn't simply allocate it. By
No it doesn't. If I write some free software and put it under the BSD
or MIT license, then any GPL developer is free to take it, and
incorporate it in his GPL program. I, however, am not allowed to use
his modifications, or incorporate his software in my software. So he
takes, without giving (of course not all developers do this but the GPL
encourages this). Naturally I cannot forbid this because I explicitly
allow these practices with my choice of license. But there's a
difference about what can be done, legally, and the unwritten rules of
polite behaviour. I have no qualms about people using the code;
however, if they come about with a "holier than thou" attitude and at
the same time use other's work without contributing back and give them
the stinking finger, this is just infuriating. Note that not all GNU
developers do that, of course. But it's in the spirit of the license.
> incorporating GPL software in your work, you have accepted its terms
> with full knowledge- similar to clicking on the "Accept" box in a
> Windows install removes from Microsoft all liability about what the
> Windows installation might destroy, corrupt and transmit to Internet
> marketers. In both cases, if those possibilities are unacceptable, then
> you can choose accordingly at the outset.
Yes, indeed. And this leads to additional work, like, to provide a real
example, a non-GPL tar program that includes the GNU options and GNU tar
format being written [since of course the default gnutar format is
slightly incompatible with the standardized tar format], so that the
dependency on the GPL GNU tar can be broken. (The program is "bsdtar",
included in recent FreeBSD versions.) Idiotic, redundant work, waste of
time.. but necessary, because of the GPL and its harmful side effects.
Many hours of work are involved in getting systems like FreeBSD cleaned
of remaining GPL software, as far as possible, because of their unwanted
side effects. The situation is a lot worse for libraries. Thankfully
most people have some common sense left and use at least the "lesser"
LGPL for libraries; libreadline being a notable counter-example. The
FSF however, advocates using the GPL, not the LGPL, for libraries, for
obvious reasons, contrary to any good practices in the free software
community.
mkb.
From: Greg Menke
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3r7gfyj8x.fsf@athena.pienet>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Greg Menke wrote:
>
> >>software community. The GPL has its most destructive effect not on the
> >>corporate world, as some of the more communistically inclined Gnu-ers
> >>would like, but on the free software community, where it creates
> >>trenches, inhibits growth and provokes confrontation instead of creating
> >>cooperation (this sub-thread here bearing witness to the problem).
> >
> >
> > How in heaven's name does free software inhibit growth and create
> > trenches? And without confrontation how do you think bad ideas and
>
> Don't try to put words into my mouth. I said the GPL creates trenches
> and inhibits growth. In the free software community.
OK, so how in heaven's name does free software inhibit growth and create
trenches in the free software community? Is somebody stopping you from
developing something or forcing you to conform to some implementation?
> > designs are winnowed? Cooperation is great but sometimes its just not
> > good enough.
>
> Technical confrontation is ok. Confrontation about policy is just
> counter-productive.
Why is confrontation about policy counter-productive- its still a
technical issue, just different tech. We're having a confrontation
about philosophy here- same thing.
> > I think you're acting a bit crazy over this issue. The FSF doesn't
> > "take" anything. Whatever software is released under the GPL enters the
> > "free software" domain- the FSF doesn't simply allocate it. By
>
> No it doesn't. If I write some free software and put it under the BSD Even if a GPL
> person took some BSD code and incorporated it
> or MIT license, then any GPL developer is free to take it, and
> incorporate it in his GPL program. I, however, am not allowed to use
> his modifications, or incorporate his software in my software. So he
> takes, without giving (of course not all developers do this but the GPL
> encourages this). Naturally I cannot forbid this because I explicitly
> allow these practices with my choice of license. But there's a
> difference about what can be done, legally, and the unwritten rules of
> polite behaviour. I have no qualms about people using the code;
> however, if they come about with a "holier than thou" attitude and at
> the same time use other's work without contributing back and give them
> the stinking finger, this is just infuriating. Note that not all GNU
> developers do that, of course. But it's in the spirit of the license.
Too bad, Matthias. If the re-use of your code is of concern, then you
should have released it under a different license. No "holier-ness"
about it. The licenses are different and have different consequences.
Its all known ahead of time so I don't see why you're complaining about
it as if you got hit over the head with it unknowingly.
> > incorporating GPL software in your work, you have accepted its terms
> > with full knowledge- similar to clicking on the "Accept" box in a
> > Windows install removes from Microsoft all liability about what the
> > Windows installation might destroy, corrupt and transmit to Internet
> > marketers. In both cases, if those possibilities are unacceptable, then
> > you can choose accordingly at the outset.
>
> Yes, indeed. And this leads to additional work, like, to provide a real
> example, a non-GPL tar program that includes the GNU options and GNU tar
> format being written [since of course the default gnutar format is
> slightly incompatible with the standardized tar format], so that the
> dependency on the GPL GNU tar can be broken. (The program is "bsdtar",
> included in recent FreeBSD versions.) Idiotic, redundant work, waste of
> time.. but necessary, because of the GPL and its harmful side effects.
> Many hours of work are involved in getting systems like FreeBSD cleaned
> of remaining GPL software, as far as possible, because of their unwanted
> side effects. The situation is a lot worse for libraries. Thankfully
> most people have some common sense left and use at least the "lesser"
> LGPL for libraries; libreadline being a notable counter-example. The
> FSF however, advocates using the GPL, not the LGPL, for libraries, for
> obvious reasons, contrary to any good practices in the free software
> community.
Well if the licenses are philosophically incompatible, then there is no
escape from redundant implementations be they free or non-free. The BSD
license has a different philosophical goal than the GPL does. That
doesn't make people who use the GPL liars, fools or stupid any more than
it does people who use the BSD license.
I kind of like the fact that the work I contribute to a GPL program
won't get sucked into some other piece of software with license
restrictions that prevent its own re-use and adaptation by other 3rd
parties. Am I a liar or devoid of common sense for preferring that
approach? It is unfortunate that my GPL software isn't transferrable
into BSD-land, what is important to me is that its not disappearing into
Microsoft-land. The BSD people can still see my code and work from it,
which is at least a compromise.
Gregm
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3eal8bF236vcU1@news.dfncis.de>
Greg Menke wrote:
> Too bad, Matthias. If the re-use of your code is of concern, then you
> should have released it under a different license. No "holier-ness"
> about it. The licenses are different and have different consequences.
So you advocate that everybody uses a license for his FREE SOFTWARE that
makes it impossible for other people who develop FREE SOFTWARE under a
slightly different license to make use of that software? You prefer a
"Balkanization" of free software? Because that's what a dogmatic
license like the GPL creates. You're so anxious about Microsoft (see
last paragraph in your posting). Do you really think Mr. Gates is
unhappy about the use of the GPL in the free software community? It's
working in his best interests if the free software community is
uncooperative and divided on policy matters.
> Its all known ahead of time so I don't see why you're complaining about
> it as if you got hit over the head with it unknowingly.
Well.. the argument hasn't started just now. It's been going on for
many years (probably as long as the GPL exists already).
> Well if the licenses are philosophically incompatible, then there is no
> escape from redundant implementations be they free or non-free. The BSD
> license has a different philosophical goal than the GPL does. That
> doesn't make people who use the GPL liars, fools or stupid any more than
> it does people who use the BSD license.
I didn't name anyone a liar, a fool or stupid.
The GPL actually could be easily modified to work for a more relaxed
atmosphere. See next.
> I kind of like the fact that the work I contribute to a GPL program
> won't get sucked into some other piece of software with license
> restrictions that prevent its own re-use and adaptation by other 3rd
> parties. Am I a liar or devoid of common sense for preferring that
You simply have to add a clause that the license is void if the code
becomes proprietary (or non-opensource). That can probably be
formulated in a couple lines. At the same time, one could lift the
infectious nature from the license. Let GPL' be that modified GPL. The
effect would be this:
Every open-source developer can use your code, for free software. For
example, I could use your GPL'-licensed code, or library for my free
code. That's the positive effect. If however, someone takes my code
and uses it for proprietary software, if allowed by my license, he would
have to stop using your code, according to your demands. This is also
basically what those dual-licensing schemes like for Qt achieve. The
proprietary software maker can still opt to use just my software and not
use your software, possibly by rewriting the GPL' covered parts or
libraries since my code isn't affected by the license of the software I
used from you.
However. This runs diametrically against the intentions of the FSF.
The goals of the FSF, as implemented with the GPL, are not to further
the sharing and distribution and general "freedom" of the licensed
software. The goal is to spread their license in a viral way to as much
software as possible, in order to get a foot in the door. They're using
the GPL-licensed software as a vector to attack the proprietary software
makers. It's basically a kind of slow-motion economic distributed
denial-of-service attack. Remember, it's the explicit goal of the FSF
to "make proprietary software obsolete". This effort for sure won't
stop before all software is GNU and all non-GNU software is outlawed. A
goal that cannot be reached, of course, but fanatics never care about
the realisability of their projected Utopia, nor about the casualities
that will litter the way. Ironically, in the end who will win are the
big companies. The small ones go belly-up and the free software
community is split into factions.
mkb.
From: Greg Menke
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3is1rycry.fsf@athena.pienet>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Greg Menke wrote:
>
> > Too bad, Matthias. If the re-use of your code is of concern, then you
> > should have released it under a different license. No "holier-ness"
> > about it. The licenses are different and have different consequences.
>
> So you advocate that everybody uses a license for his FREE SOFTWARE that
> makes it impossible for other people who develop FREE SOFTWARE under a
> slightly different license to make use of that software? You prefer a
> "Balkanization" of free software? Because that's what a dogmatic
> license like the GPL creates. You're so anxious about Microsoft (see
> last paragraph in your posting). Do you really think Mr. Gates is
> unhappy about the use of the GPL in the free software community? It's
> working in his best interests if the free software community is
> uncooperative and divided on policy matters.
I think Mr. Gates is perplexed by the free software community in
general, and very interested because its eating his monopoly away bite
by bite. Pretty soon Microsoft will be forced to compete which they've
not had to do since the early 90's. I think he's particularly
interested in GPL people because they have a firm ideological stance
that excludes him. He has no problem with BSD licenses, he can just
take the code and do whatever- but the GPL stops him in his tracks.
I don't see how the free software community has any "policy" as such,
organizations have policy, some elements of the free software community
have them too- but for the most part people do the work they want to and
each makes their own choices with respect to licensing. And just who
the hell is going to be telling me about "policy matters" with respect
to the GPL work I do?
> > Its all known ahead of time so I don't see why you're complaining about
> > it as if you got hit over the head with it unknowingly.
>
> Well.. the argument hasn't started just now. It's been going on for
> many years (probably as long as the GPL exists already).
True- and it shows no signs of winding down. I think the fact that
people are bitching about it means its pissing off something like as
many people as it enfranchises, which makes me think its doing pretty
well.
>
> > I kind of like the fact that the work I contribute to a GPL program
> > won't get sucked into some other piece of software with license
> > restrictions that prevent its own re-use and adaptation by other 3rd
> > parties. Am I a liar or devoid of common sense for preferring that
>
> You simply have to add a clause that the license is void if the code
> becomes proprietary (or non-opensource). That can probably be
> formulated in a couple lines. At the same time, one could lift the
> infectious nature from the license. Let GPL' be that modified GPL. The
> effect would be this:
> Every open-source developer can use your code, for free software. For
> example, I could use your GPL'-licensed code, or library for my free
> code. That's the positive effect. If however, someone takes my code
> and uses it for proprietary software, if allowed by my license, he would
> have to stop using your code, according to your demands. This is also
> basically what those dual-licensing schemes like for Qt achieve. The
> proprietary software maker can still opt to use just my software and not
> use your software, possibly by rewriting the GPL' covered parts or
> libraries since my code isn't affected by the license of the software I
> used from you.
But I LIKE the "viral" nature. It provides an impetus to cooperate for
real because you can be confident the other guy working on the project
isn't going to take your work and contribute nothing back. I probably
agree that the GPL is overly assertive, however I also think that being
clever in wording a kinder, gentler GPL variant is a receipe for
confusion. And I don't really want to demand anything more than my code
stays available wherever it goes in other projects, whatever their type.
I think a licensing scenario like QT is unstable, its neither one or the
other and maintaining the duality is really a balancing act. I'm not
saying it doesn't work but I wouldn't contribute work to it.
I don't mind people writing my software out of an app, more power to
them- and I give them full credit for honoring the GPL. My issue is
fundamentally the maintenance of my contributions open in the same sense
as I contributed them.
> However. This runs diametrically against the intentions of the FSF.
> The goals of the FSF, as implemented with the GPL, are not to further
> the sharing and distribution and general "freedom" of the licensed
> software. The goal is to spread their license in a viral way to as much
> software as possible, in order to get a foot in the door. They're using
> the GPL-licensed software as a vector to attack the proprietary software
> makers. It's basically a kind of slow-motion economic distributed
> denial-of-service attack. Remember, it's the explicit goal of the FSF
> to "make proprietary software obsolete". This effort for sure won't
> stop before all software is GNU and all non-GNU software is outlawed. A
> goal that cannot be reached, of course, but fanatics never care about
> the realisability of their projected Utopia, nor about the casualities
> that will litter the way. Ironically, in the end who will win are the
> big companies. The small ones go belly-up and the free software
> community is split into factions.
I don't think a 2-bit organization like the FSF and the GPL is going to
make proprietary software obsolete whatever the "mission statements"
are. And since when do we believe mission statements and philosophic
meanderings of any organization? Good for-profit software is written in
well funded, well organized and well run organizations. Those can exist
in a variety of sizes and that is where you'll find innovation that
makes people want to buy the software. The other less efficient
organizations don't get my sympathy, and lacking compelling competition,
free software allows me to not give them my money. Its hardly a denial
of service, its giving me a choice. I am a customer with money, I don't
give the smallest damn about the convienence of the software authors-
either they have something that makes me want to buy it or they don't.
I view the "viral" aspect of the GPL as a necessary means to help bring
developers to the table. There isn't a budget and many of the
developers wouldn't work on these projects if they had management to
deal with (I certainly wouldn't)- so a strong assertion of how the work
will be conserved in a distributed and unmanaged environment is very
important.
Gregm
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3eapoeF230o2U1@news.dfncis.de>
Greg Menke wrote:
> I think Mr. Gates is perplexed by the free software community in
> general, and very interested because its eating his monopoly away bite
> by bite. Pretty soon Microsoft will be forced to compete which they've
Where is it eating it away? Microsoft's net income has increased by
94.9% (!) in the last quarter[1]. Where would they have to compete? If
at all, they have to compete with Apple on the desktop now with Macs
becoming more and more attractive to "ordinary" end user consumers as of
late and Windows Longhorn being delayed further and further. There's
nothing in the rest of the Unix community that is in that ballpark. And
on servers, I don't think the two worlds really overlap that much. If
you have an ISAPI based application suite, you can't just move it to
Apache+PHP or Tomcat, for example. And vice versa.
For the rest of your comments about your liking of the viral nature of
the GPL, I just have to say that I disagree.
mkb.
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/29/microsoft_q3_05_results/
From: Greg Menke
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3sm0v1dlw.fsf@athena.pienet>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Greg Menke wrote:
>
> > I think Mr. Gates is perplexed by the free software community in
> > general, and very interested because its eating his monopoly away bite
> > by bite. Pretty soon Microsoft will be forced to compete which they've
>
> Where is it eating it away? Microsoft's net income has increased by
> 94.9% (!) in the last quarter[1]. Where would they have to compete? If
> at all, they have to compete with Apple on the desktop now with Macs
> becoming more and more attractive to "ordinary" end user consumers as of
> late and Windows Longhorn being delayed further and further. There's
> nothing in the rest of the Unix community that is in that ballpark. And
> on servers, I don't think the two worlds really overlap that much. If
> you have an ISAPI based application suite, you can't just move it to
> Apache+PHP or Tomcat, for example. And vice versa.
Its not reached the inflection point yet. The majority of server
infrastructure is already on Linux and theres no sign of that doing
anything decreasing- and thats where control is slowly slipping from
their fingers. Windows is a lost cause as far as network infrastructure
is concerned so theres no room there. If they cannot enforce their
monopoly end-to-end, its going to leak away. The Linux desktop as
Microsoft replacement isn't here yet- that would speed things up quite a
bit. I don't see OS X as being anything more than a niche player, too
cute and too annoying to really use and the hardware is too expensive.
Clearly you can't easily move web content, but the better the free
software solutions get, the more attractive they become for the next
deployments. I have never met a client who likes the idea of paying
Microsoft, give them better functionality elsewhere and they're gone.
Each Microsoft product release is more delayed, slower and more bloated
and just as ridden with security holes as the one before and the
software licensing regieme is more onerous than ever. People eventually
notice this kind of thing. Microsoft is a huge company with huge
inertia- but so was IBM. In the early 90's the place I worked went from
an all IBM shop to generic PC's in the space of two years or so-
thousands of workstations- with each machine updated every couple years.
Theres no way Microsoft is somehow insulated from that kind of reality,
particularly as they offer a maximum-cost solution.
What may trip them up in the shorter term is the next generation of IT-
whatever form it takes. The Internet almost caught them, remember how
much money they were pumping into MSN as a competitor to Compuserve and
the old AOL? Microsoft isn't any more flexible than they were then and
now they have a HUGE infrastructure wound up in the status quo.
Evenually Microsoft will have to start tapping into their cash reserves
to preserve their profit margin and corporate mythology and its all
downhill from there. The reason being they cannot admit they have a
irretrievable mess on their hands and move on.
> For the rest of your comments about your liking of the viral nature of
> the GPL, I just have to say that I disagree.
And I disagree with you.
Gregm
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3eccriF2cn80U1@news.dfncis.de>
Greg Menke wrote:
> Its not reached the inflection point yet. The majority of server
> infrastructure is already on Linux and theres no sign of that doing
> anything decreasing- and thats where control is slowly slipping from
> their fingers. Windows is a lost cause as far as network infrastructure
> is concerned so theres no room there. If they cannot enforce their
If you had actually read the whole article instead of just the upper
half (or none at all), you might have noticed that the "server and
tools" business is "booming". While the Windows desktop is their bread
und butter, it's the latter where the real money is being made now. I
wouldn't touch MS' "server and tools" stuff with a long pole if I can
avoid it, but I can see that it is quite attractive to a lot of people.
> What may trip them up in the shorter term is the next generation of IT-
> whatever form it takes. The Internet almost caught them, remember how
> much money they were pumping into MSN as a competitor to Compuserve and
> the old AOL? Microsoft isn't any more flexible than they were then and
> now they have a HUGE infrastructure wound up in the status quo.
What are you arguing for? Linux isn't any more flexible. All they do
is just copy. From Unix, from Windows, from Mac, only copying and
reinventing the wheel (and that, badly, most of the time). Zero
creativity here, only hype and hot air. The OSes will be relatively
irrelevant for the "next generation of IT". This will happen in much
higher levels and work on all of the then available mainstream systems.
"The Internet" of the mid-90ies, as being publicly available ISPs and
the Web, wasn't bound to any single platform either. (Although you're
right that Microsoft nearly ditched it with their initial opposition to
the uncontrolled Internet.)
> Evenually Microsoft will have to start tapping into their cash reserves
> to preserve their profit margin and corporate mythology and its all
> downhill from there.
I think that's rather unrealistic in the forseeable future.
mkb.
From: Robert Uhl
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3mzr3uq35.fsf@4dv.net>
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
>
> No it doesn't. If I write some free software and put it under the BSD
> or MIT license, then any GPL developer is free to take it, and
> incorporate it in his GPL program. I, however, am not allowed to use
> his modifications, or incorporate his software in my software. So he
> takes, without giving (of course not all developers do this but the
> GPL encourages this).
How is that any different from someone taking your BSDed code and making
it proprietary? Other than the fact that, of course, you _can_ still
use his modifications--just under another license. Microsoft's not
releasing their modifications to the BSD network stack under any sort of
reasonable license, but a GPLed version of the same
Your proposal downthread for a GPL' which allows use in any free
software but not in proprietary software is in effect what the LGPL does
anyway. Your example was that GPL' code could be used in BSD code, but
if the BSD code were made proprietary then the GPL' bits would need to
be left out. That's pretty much the situation as it stands.
You're being logically inconsistent: on the one hand you want to be able
to use free software (GPL, BSD, whatever); on the other you get upset
when others try to ensure that their software remains free, but give you
access to it; on the other you don't get upset when others make
proprietary modifications to your code. It doesn't make sense.
> I have no qualms about people using the code; however, if they come
> about with a "holier than thou" attitude and at the same time use
> other's work without contributing back and give them the stinking
> finger, this is just infuriating.
They do contribute back--just in a form which is guaranteed not to be
made proprietary, ever.
> Idiotic, redundant work, waste of time.. but necessary, because of the
> GPL and its harmful side effects.
What unwanted side effects? Other than the fact that it cannot be made
proprietary, of course.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
Krishhti Unjall! Vertet Unjall!
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3ecc1jF2a2akU1@news.dfncis.de>
Robert Uhl wrote:
> What unwanted side effects? Other than the fact that it cannot be made
> proprietary, of course.
No, that you generally can't include it in free software. I don't
really care about proprietary software.
mkb.
From: Bulent Murtezaoglu
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87oebl6fao.fsf@p4.internal>
>>>>> "MB" == Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
[...]
MB> I accept the copying terms of a developer for a certain piece
MB> of software, of course. I don't complain about that.
MB> Everyone can of course decide how his works shall be used.
MB> What I object to is the hijacking and spinning of the word
MB> "free" that the GPL (and the FSF) embodies. GPL software is
MB> not as "free" as, say, public domain software. [...]
FWIW, I agree. They use the term "Non-copylefted free software" for
software that comes with fewer stipulations than GPL:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#Non-CopyleftedFreeSoftware
On the other hand, it can be (and clearly is) argued that it is not
the people who use the software that 'free' refers to but it is the
software itself. From that perspective, GPL protects the _software's_
freedom against the people. I find this odd, but amusingly clever.
cheers,
BM
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e6hvcF1f083U1@news.dfncis.de>
Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> wrote:
>software itself. From that perspective, GPL protects the _software's_
>freedom against the people. I find this odd, but amusingly clever.
If I distribute something under a different open-source license,
it also will always remain free. Noone else but the original
copyright holder ("me") can take that away. And once distributed,
a user will always be able to use it according to the license for
which he obtained it[1]. So the software's "freedom", if such a
notion exists, is retained in any case.
mkb.
[1] Assuming the "license" and "copyright" are valid in the particular
country you live in.
From: Ulrich Hobelmann
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e6sbrF1guhjU2@individual.net>
Matthias Buelow wrote:
> Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> wrote:
>
>
>>software itself. From that perspective, GPL protects the _software's_
>>freedom against the people. I find this odd, but amusingly clever.
>
>
> If I distribute something under a different open-source license,
> it also will always remain free. Noone else but the original
> copyright holder ("me") can take that away. And once distributed,
> a user will always be able to use it according to the license for
> which he obtained it[1]. So the software's "freedom", if such a
> notion exists, is retained in any case.
Exactly, and that's a good thing, and the reason for the BSD stuff
to exist.
What the GPL adds, for good or bad, is the law that all
enhancements of the software *also* have to remain free, if you
ever distribute them (i.e. you can make enhancements for your
private or in-company use; but I think GNU wants to prevent the
latter in GPL v3).
> mkb.
>
> [1] Assuming the "license" and "copyright" are valid in the particular
> country you live in.
The big corporate lobbies do anything to spread copyright and IP
around the world, so that's a safe bet, except maybe for some
Communist countries.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u1x8h1n24.fsf@nhplace.com>
Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
> I don't have much sympathy for you. The GPL terms are spelled out very
> clearly. If you're not willing to accept them, then you are free to not
> use GPL software.
This is not entirely true. The free market has a way of detecting
when I use products that are too expensive. If someone sells a
TiVo-like device and it's made of hardware that can be had at $100,
free software at $0, and advertising that costs, say $50/unit, and the
person is expecting profit of $25/unit, for a total cost of $175, then
to compete, I can't get hardware cheaper than market. Maybe I can be
clever with advertising, but then so can they, so we'll asymptotically
reach the same value. I can wiggle down the profit a little, taking
$24 or $20 or $15 per unit, but there's a limit there. In the end,
the market squeezes out all the excess. The one place I have to save
money is to use free software rather tha pay for software development
and/or commercial software. But then the free software is not use
"freely". It's forced by the market.
This is the kind of freedom like "you freely accept the interest rates
the credit card you elect offers you" or "you freely accept the amount
they want to pay you at the restaurant where you're waiting tables".
Sure, somewhere there are people with the monetary clout to negotiate
their own credit card interest rates, and somewhere there are people
who insist on a certain salary to wait tables. But a lot of people
have no such option. And it simply isn't true as a universal truth
that for all people, they freely enter into these things.
I'd rather not take a drug test for a job. Why? I have ethical
objections to the concept. And I find it demeaning. I've never done
drugs a day in my life, not a puff or taste. I have no reason to
suppose I'd get a negative on such a test. But I just don't like it.
Yet I'm on the job market now (in case anyone knows of leads, heh),
and some of the jobs I'm looking at have drug tests required. Am I
freely entering into taking a drug test when all I'm really doing is
making sure my family stays fed? Package deals are more complex than
that.
In fact, IMO, it adds insult to injury to suggest that those who are
left with little or no rational option BUT to do these things is,
de facto, freely entering into it.
The ones who ARE freely entering into it are the ones giving away the
software for free. Certainly no one is economically coercing them.
But their actions may have economically coercive effects on others,
which effects I would simply like them to examine beforehand rather
than assuming that every use of GPL is automatically good.
There is a difference between "good" and "necessarily good", just as
there is a difference between truth and necessary truth. It's true
that the earth has one moon, but there could have been two or five and
the Universe would not come to an end. It's necessarily true that 2+2=4.
It's a truth of a different sort.
It might be good that there are certain GPL'd things, but only because
of circumstance of the market, not BECAUSE of the mere use of the GPL
itself. So the way to know you're doing good is not to check whether a
GPL is attached, it's to [correctly] evaluate the market impact of what
you're doing.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
>
> > I don't have much sympathy for you. The GPL terms are spelled
> > out very clearly. If you're not willing to accept them, then
> > you are free to not use GPL software.
>
> This is not entirely true. The free market has a way of
> detecting when I use products that are too expensive.
You seem to be advocating anti-free markets though.
* Price fixing.
My copy of "Strategy and Tactics of Pricing" defines horizontal price
fixing: "Competitors agree on the prices they will charge or key terms
of sale affecting price."
You seem to advocate horizontal price fixing by exhorting people to
evade free software. For reasons both of price and terms of sale. In
many people's minds, this may undermine your arguments.
* No alternative to free (as-in-markets) software.
I don't yet see an alternative to free software which is even more
protective of the free market. The GPL, for example, is a hack, but it
creates a class of software which may not be locked behind
state-enforced socialist copyright barriers. Its creators do apologize
for using socialist machinery to undermine socialist machinery. And
free software such as BSD and public domain don't resort to this.
Welfare mothers birth babies to get money. Welfare coders birth
programs to gain IP monopolies.
* Cost
Free software proves that software may be produced for a consumer price
of $0. Existence proof.
----------
More problems with closedsource software, explained earlier.
* Less private physical property rights. (The State requires you need
permission to copy samizdat bits.)
* Less free market.
* Less perfect market information. (Opensource not only shows the
sourcecode, but internal communications are usually far more open.)
* Less choice/competition. (In commercial desktop OSes, there's only MS
Windows, and maybe MacOS X, which is built largely on opensource.)
* Requires Soviet-style enforcement. (Microsoft's organization, the
BSA, cultivates a network of informants to snitch on Small Businesses,
in order to raid them.)
* Undermines taxpayer investments in Darpa and other government
subsidies.
From: David Trudgett
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m31x8hs5rs.fsf@rr.trudgett>
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
>
>> I don't have much sympathy for you. The GPL terms are spelled out very
>> clearly. If you're not willing to accept them, then you are free to not
>> use GPL software.
>
> This is not entirely true. The free market has a way of detecting
You shouldn't really talk about fictional things like "the free
market" when we all know that it doesn't exist. What capitalists call
a "free" market is, in fact, only possible through state regulations,
protection of monopolies, "property" rights, trade tariffs, and so on,
all achieved through the mechanism of nothing more glamorous than
simple violence, including the invasion of other lands and the
slaughtering of their people. The capitalist's abuse of the word
"free" would seem to warrant some condemnation by those concerned
about its correct usage...
> The one place I have to save money is to use free software rather
> tha pay for software development and/or commercial software.
"The one place" seems more than a little defeatist to me. In fact it
sounds rather more like the rationalisation of someone loathe to
accept responsibility for his own decisions. It sounds like you are
saying you would be living in a cardboard box in the gutter [What?! A
cardboard box? Luxury! When I was a kid... :-)] were it not for the
fact of being able to make use of high quality zero or low cost
software.
> But then the free software is not use "freely". It's forced by the
> market.
I've misplaced that miniature violin... ;-) Seriously, though, that is
a whole heap of malarkey (whatever that is). I don't, for example,
have to use Windows if I don't want to (and I don't). Do you hear me
wingeing that I can't get any sort of office job (my natural birth
right) because 99.9% of office workers are "required" to use Windows?
In fact, I am not forced to use Windows. If I do so, it is because I
choose to do so, and for no other reason.
>
> This is the kind of freedom like "you freely accept the interest rates
> the credit card you elect offers you"
You're getting the idea, now. As it happens, I also do not use credit
cards, and in doing so, I am exercising my freedom of
choice. Certainly, in making that choice, I forego certain abilities
that other people are not willing to forego. The fact remains that we
all still have a choice in the matter, and we are all free to choose
differently. Do not complain that because you find consequences of
your choice to be unpalatable, that you therefore have no choice. That
is irrational.
> In fact, IMO, it adds insult to injury to suggest that those who are
> left with little or no rational option BUT to do these things is,
> de facto, freely entering into it.
In light of what I have already said, this is a straw man argument,
and for an intelligent person, verging on dishonesty.
David
--
David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/
Above all, even if you allow that this organization is necessary, why
do you believe it to be your duty to maintain it at the cost of your
best feelings? Who has made you the nurse in charge of this sick and
moribund organization? Not society nor the state nor anyone; no one
has asked you to undertake this; you who fill your position of
landowner, merchant, tzar, priest, or soldier know very well that you
occupy that position by no means with the unselfish aim of maintaining
the organization of life necessary to men's happiness, but simply in
your own interests, to satisfy your own covetousness or vanity or
ambition or indolence or cowardice. If you did not desire that
position, you would not be doing your utmost to retain it. Try the
experiment of ceasing to commit the cruel, treacherous, and base
actions that you are constantly committing in order to retain your
position, and you will lose it at once. Try the simple experiment, as
a government official, of giving up lying, and refusing to take a part
in executions and acts of violence; as a priest, of giving up
deception; as a soldier, of giving up murder; as landowner or
manufacturer, of giving up defending your property by fraud and force;
and you will at once lose the position which you pretend is forced
upon you, and which seems burdensome to you.
A man cannot be placed against his will in a situation opposed to his
conscience.
-- Leo Tolstoy, "The Kingdom of God is Within You"
From: Ulrich Hobelmann
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <3e7ojuF1l7vuU1@individual.net>
David Trudgett wrote:
> You shouldn't really talk about fictional things like "the free
> market" when we all know that it doesn't exist. What capitalists call
> a "free" market is, in fact, only possible through state regulations,
> protection of monopolies, "property" rights, trade tariffs, and so on,
What capitalists are those?
Regulations un-free the market. Protection of monopolies also
distorts the market, as can be seen. Or do you mean the
destruction of "monopolies"? That's unnecessary. For instance,
MS has high market share, because people keep buying their stuff.
There are competitors, like Apple (Mac OS), Yellowtab (Zeta),
Sun (Star Office), Open Office, Linux etc., so anyone who cares
*can* switch. That's the point. The only monopoly that hurts
anybody is a coercive monopoly, and that's typically achieved
through oppression, like the state telling you that you may not
offer telephony services, or transport letters, packages, or that
you may not create your own railway company.
(further down in your post you actually point those out yourself,
so I don't quite see what you're trying to say...)
Property is the stuff you have, so that's kind of natural to me.
If you want to protect your property, grab a gun and wait till the
next criminal breaks into your house. You may also ask the police
or hire private guards to protect you.
Trade tariffs again only prevent a free market. They certainly
don't create freedom.
> all achieved through the mechanism of nothing more glamorous than
> simple violence, including the invasion of other lands and the
> slaughtering of their people. The capitalist's abuse of the word
> "free" would seem to warrant some condemnation by those concerned
> about its correct usage...
Again, all that violence and offensive wars have nothing to do
with freedom. On the contrary, war is the violation of another's
property rights, so that person or country will defend itself, and
can hire police, an army etc. to kill the attacking force.
That's what everybody who's sane does in those circumstances.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ufywxfe5m.fsf@nhplace.com>
David Trudgett <······@zeta.org.au.nospamplease> writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
>
> > Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
> >
> >> I don't have much sympathy for you. The GPL terms are spelled out very
> >> clearly. If you're not willing to accept them, then you are free to not
> >> use GPL software.
> >
> > This is not entirely true. The free market has a way of detecting
>
> You shouldn't really talk about fictional things like "the free
> market" when we all know that it doesn't exist. What capitalists call
> a "free" market is, in fact, only possible through state regulations,
> protection of monopolies, "property" rights, trade tariffs, and so on,
> all achieved through the mechanism of nothing more glamorous than
> simple violence, including the invasion of other lands and the
> slaughtering of their people. The capitalist's abuse of the word
> "free" would seem to warrant some condemnation by those concerned
> about its correct usage...
>
>
> > The one place I have to save money is to use free software rather
> > tha pay for software development and/or commercial software.
>
> "The one place" seems more than a little defeatist to me.
It's not defeatist. It's an observation that if I and my competitor
are selling essentially a commodity, all of the "unnecessary" costs
will be eventually pushed out. It's a luxury to say one can pay
someone for software that one can get from somewhere else free when
your competitor is not doing the same. The market will tend to detect
each and everyone one of these excesses and pressure you to remove
this cost. Hence, the market will tend toward free software even if
the developers prefer to pay for software out of some ideological
choice. The choice is made by the end-user, who will not care whether
it's free or otherwise, they just want the cost low. And so the
choice is taken from the would-be buyer and given to an end-user who
isn't aware. I don't call that voluntary on anyone's part.
> > But then the free software is not use "freely". It's forced by the
> > market.
>
> I've misplaced that miniature violin...
I'm not looking for your sympathy.
I will simply observe that you are being dismissive of my point of view.
I have not been similarly dismissive of the free software point of view.
Once people stop finding reasons not to listen to one another,
intellectual discourse ceases.
So I'm opting out.
From: Greg Menke
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m364xszks0.fsf@athena.pienet>
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> David Trudgett <······@zeta.org.au.nospamplease> writes:
>
> > Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> >
> >
> > > The one place I have to save money is to use free software rather
> > > tha pay for software development and/or commercial software.
> >
> > "The one place" seems more than a little defeatist to me.
>
> It's not defeatist. It's an observation that if I and my competitor
> are selling essentially a commodity, all of the "unnecessary" costs
> will be eventually pushed out. It's a luxury to say one can pay
> someone for software that one can get from somewhere else free when
> your competitor is not doing the same. The market will tend to detect
> each and everyone one of these excesses and pressure you to remove
> this cost. Hence, the market will tend toward free software even if
> the developers prefer to pay for software out of some ideological
> choice. The choice is made by the end-user, who will not care whether
> it's free or otherwise, they just want the cost low. And so the
> choice is taken from the would-be buyer and given to an end-user who
> isn't aware. I don't call that voluntary on anyone's part.
But not all software purchase choices are driven by cost, even in a
commodity situation. If the software is more or less the same quality
and performance, then sure- but thats not often the case. What is often
the case is the for-profit software is stuck in a rut where there isn't
much going on because its cheaper to keep selling the 5 year old design
than it is to keep adding value. In that case, free software will force
the for-profit to invest in their product or go out of business, despite
the prohibitive cost of entry into the market that a for-profit
competitor would incur.
Free software gives additional value as well, a customer cannot be
locked into expensive licensing problems, and can't be discarded and
left with no recourse whatsoever when the software product is abandoned
for whatever reason. In many cases I'd choose free software for no
other reason than the latter. This is a huge benefit to the buyer and
the end-user that for-profits simply cannot provide.
If the response is "the customer should negiotiate support and service
at the appropriate level", then here are more significant, long-term
direct costs to the customer in addition to the purchase price of the
software- and there still is no guarantee that the service and support
will even be available, appropriate or provided at all regardless of the
contracted service.
Gregm
From: David Trudgett
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3wtq7n968.fsf@rr.trudgett>
Kent Pitman said in part:
>> > The one place I have to save money is to use free software rather
>> > tha pay for software development and/or commercial software.
>>
David Trudgett replied in part:
>> "The one place" seems more than a little defeatist to me.
Kent Pitman replied:
> It's not defeatist. It's an observation that if I and my competitor
> are selling essentially a commodity, all of the "unnecessary" costs
> will be eventually pushed out. It's a luxury to say one can pay
> someone for software that one can get from somewhere else free when
> your competitor is not doing the same. The market will tend to detect
> each and everyone one of these excesses and pressure you to remove
> this cost. Hence, the market will tend toward free software even if
> the developers prefer to pay for software out of some ideological
> choice. The choice is made by the end-user, who will not care whether
> it's free or otherwise, they just want the cost low. And so the
> choice is taken from the would-be buyer and given to an end-user who
> isn't aware. I don't call that voluntary on anyone's part.
About it not being defeatist, well we'll just have to agree to
disagree on that one, it appears. I perfectly well see the economic
rationale you are trying to make, but you didn't see the fallacy I was
trying in turn to point out to you. Remember, you used the very
specific words, which I quoted back to you: "The one place." The
fallacy should be very clear: it consists of turning a lack of
imagination into a premise upon which the rest of the argument
hangs. Since we demonstrably do not live in a world where there is
only one alternative to any given situation, the whole edifice of your
economic rationale comes tumbling down.
Now, I do understand why you chose to use the phrase, "The one place."
If you had been honest and accurate, you would have had to say that
*one* of the ways in which a business can save money and become more
competitive is by making use of high quality zero or low cost
software, and that, furthermore, this is a very tempting route for
businesses to take, since that is the way of capitalism. You would
then have had to continue the argument by saying that *if* a business
(call it 'Business-A) decides to go down that route, then a couple of
things might happen: (1) those who sell secret, proprietary software
that does the same thing as the zero cost open source software, will
find life more difficult, and may, for instance, have to spend more on
marketing; and (2) the businesses who are competing with 'Business-A
*on price* will be pressured to cut costs and *one* of the (tempting)
ways they could do this would be to also use high quality zero cost
software (and why not? this is the capitalist way).
It is difficult to see how any sort of convincing argument could be
made with so many ifs and maybes floating around, not to mention other
assumptions, like the assumption of competition on *price*, as opposed
to all the other things of which competition *actually* consists, like
quality, timeliness, innovation, trendiness, style, locality, and so
on and so forth. So, I do see your dilemma, and the necessity of using
absolute language.
I like your conclusion about the market tending towards Free Software,
though. It's just a pity that the premises used to get there are
faulty. Obviously, though, the whole point of your argument is that
you *don't* like the conclusion. But that begs the question of *why*
you don't want to see the spread of Free Software. The answer at the
moment appears to me to go along the lines of: "I don't think I can
get rich on Free Software." That
Ayn-Rand-style-greed-is-good-capitalist-ethic seems like a lame reason
to me, so it may not be true, but you have not provided any other. You
have astutely avoided stipulating how Free Software is supposed to
harm, rather than benefit society (as opposed to how it might harm
some hypothetical emperor's-new-clothes-economic-system). All you have
claimed (with dubious argumentation) is that competition becomes
harder and prices drop, which doesn't seem too bad a thing to me, from
a capitalist perspective. Of course, that scenario may have a whole
different appearance to those who just want to get rich quick, as they
say.
The question is also begged about why you even want to discuss how
Free Software impacts on your ideas of economics. Assuming that you
are not someone who likes wasting time in pointless debates, it would
seem logical to conclude that you think something should be *done*
about it. So then, you are either advocating *controlled* markets in
which people's freedoms are suppressed (much as they are in today's
markets, so this would only be an extension of current reality,
really), or you are on some sort of crusade to educate others into
some form of ideology (your word) in which the capitalist dictum of
short term profit maximisation no longer holds sway. Mind you, I agree
that the world would be a much better place without that dictum, but I
have no confidence that an ideology that seems to necessarily involve
price fixing on a global scale would be any less harmful.
>> I've misplaced that miniature violin...
>
> I'm not looking for your sympathy.
Come on, Kent, we're all friends here. You really need to lighten up a
bit. If you hadn't deleted the smiley face and the "Seriously, though"
following my joke, the humour would be obvious to all.
>
> I will simply observe that you are being dismissive of my point of view.
> I have not been similarly dismissive of the free software point of view.
I don't think this is a fair thing to say to someone who has
demolished your argument. My views probably *do* appear dismissive to
you, of course, but only because Free Software does not live within
your capitalist conception of economics into which you are trying to
shoe horn it. The fact that Free Software plays so *well* with the
capitalist paradigm is the thing to wonder at here, for it has nothing
whatsoever to do with that paradigm.
So, there are two things here: (1) the impact, real or imagined, on
people's ability to get rich in a capitalist style economic system, is
irrelevant; and (2) Your arguments are based upon false premises
anyway, so your conclusion that Free Software will one day rule the
world [oh yeah, that's a joke, Kent! ;-)] does not follow. I wish it
did, though.
>
> Once people stop finding reasons not to listen to one another,
> intellectual discourse ceases.
I don't hold it against you. Really, I don't! I swear! :-)
>
> So I'm opting out.
So be it. Nice talking. I *do* play hard ball, you know. But I still
like ya, ya son-of-a-gun!
David
--
David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/
" ... I've concluded that the notion that exposing the hypocrisy and
lies of the US government will lead to enlightenment is a seriously
wrongheaded strategy. Why? Because the majority of white Americans,
the ones who support the war, realize at some level that they are
privileged relative to the rest of the world, and that this privilege
is based on the hegemony of the US. Therefore, they support whatever
it takes to maintain that hegemony. If anything, they want to be lied
to so they have a means to deny responsibility."
-- Unknown author, 2003.
http://davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr34.html
From: Jon Boone
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3k6m7y55i.fsf@amicus.delamancha.org>
Kent Pitman wrote:
>> It's not defeatist. It's an observation that if I and my
>> competitor are selling essentially a commodity, all of the
>> "unnecessary" costs will be eventually pushed out.
David Trudgett replies:
> [Your] fallacy should be very clear: it consists of turning a
> lack of imagination into a premise upon which the rest of the
> argument hangs. Since we demonstrably do not live in a world where
> there is only one alternative to any given situation, the whole
> edifice of your economic rationale comes tumbling down.
First, you must recall that Kent is discussing a commoditized
market. In such a situation, you can't compete on issues like
"quality, timeliness, innovation, trendiness, style, locality, and
so on and so forth."
A commoditized market is one where there is very little room for
effective differentiation. What small margins are available in this
market are quickly eaten up by the other competitors attempts to
wrangle for an additional small % of market share.
The labor involved in producing these goods and services we
consume is a significant component of the overall cost, especially
when we are discussing commoditized goods and services. At this
point, the producer of a commoditized good seeks to lower a portion
of this significant labor cost.
*One* way to go about it is to use software that is "gratis" - in
order to save on paying programmers to write the software you need.
Kent continues:
>> It's a luxury to say one can pay someone for software that one can
>> get from somewhere else free when your competitor is not doing the
>> same.
This is just an observation that as a new round of commoditization
occurs, all manufacturers adopt similar (if not identical) modes of
production. If your competitor uses "gratis" software and it is
effective at reducing their costs (with a consequent lowering in the
price of their goods/services), then you are compelled (if you want
to stay in this market) to follow suit.
Kent continues:
>> The market will tend to detect each and everyone one of these
>> excesses and pressure you to remove this cost. Hence, the market
>> will tend toward free software even if the developers prefer to
>> pay for software out of some ideological choice.
David Trudgett replies:
>
> [Hypothetical conditionals ellided....]
>
> It is difficult to see how any sort of convincing argument could be
> made with so many ifs and maybes floating around,
Actually, none of those conditionals are necessary, because Kent
had already established that he was discussing the commoditized
marketplace. Consequently, the conditionals had already been
answered in a particular fashion. To wit:
1. the company is presumed to be attempting to compete in an
established market place
2. the market place is presumed to have been commoditized, which
means that the only competition is on price basis
3. price based competition, it is necessary to cut all costs that
can be cut. Sometimes costs of materials can be cut (and if
that can be done, it will be). Eventually, the only costs to be
decreased will be those associated with labor.
So, we are at the crux of Kent's argument (and his *actual*
conditionals):
If
1. "free software" tends toward a "gratis" valuation of same,
[I recall that Kent thinks this is true. There is some evidence
that this may be so.]
*and*
2. "free software" is pursued with the aim of commoditizing
markets
[I recall that Kent thinks that this is true, for at least *some*
"free software" developers. There is some evidence that this may
be so.]
*then*
3. as "free software" commoditizes market places, it drives up
the likelyhood of a given market adopting "free software" in
an effort ot cut costs.
[This is a reasonable conclusion to draw from the premises.]
Further, if
4. the commoditized markets increasingly adopt "free software"
to cut labor costs
[Kent has stated that he believes this will happen. There is
some evidence that it has already begun in some markets. For
example, in the heavily commodized WiFi market place, there is
at least one vendor whose software is based on Linux. The
increasing share of Linux-based embedded platforms seems to
bear this out.]
*and*
5. there is a corresponding increase in the percentage of the
extant software pool that "free software" comprises
[This is difficult to ascertain during the process of
commoditization. It becomes clearer after the market reaches
stasis and there is more stability. I think it is too soon to
judge on this.]
*then*
6. There will be a corresponding decrease (on average) in the
value that is placed on the labor involved in creating
software.
[This is a reasonable conclusion to draw from Kent's premises.
Everyone is, of course, free to reject one or more of the
premises and conclude otherwise.
Note, however, that "free software" doesn't have to drive all
proprietary software out of the market to have lowered the
value of the labor involved in making software.
If a market reaches stasis and the only viable software
platforms to choose from are 1 proprietary and 1 "free"
version, then the value that the market attributed to the
creation of alternative platforms has been decreased (on
average).
If you can accept these two arguments, then the conclusion Kent
will draw is this:
7. "free software" developers are shooting themselves in the
foot
[For the record, Kent and I disagree about this. I think that
(for now, anyway) the damage is limited to those who aspire to
sell software. Kent has responded to me previously indicating
that he judges that the picture is not so rosy for those who
are content to be wage-slaves (my words, not his).]
*and*
8. They are shooting most other programmers in the foot (or some
other part of the body) too. Perhaps even first.
> not to mention other assumptions, like the assumption of
> competition on *price*, as opposed to all the other things of which
> competition *actually* consists, like quality, timeliness,
> innovation, trendiness, style, locality, and so on and so forth.
Kent is not arguing that "free software" gives you herpes or will
make you grow hair on the palms of your hands. He's discussing
the potential economic impact of "free software" on the market
place. People often have a hard time understanding what that impact
might be. Consequently, it is necessary to make it easier for them
to understand by presenting the difficult cases directly.
We've already discussed the fact that there are ways in which you
can attempt to innovate -- and if you are lucky, initiate a paradigm
shift in how the market is perceived. This is not easy to do, nor is it
cheap. Ironically, this is not something that is readily done by
people in the situation Kent is describing, which is why it doesn't
get any play in his argument.
> I like your conclusion about the market tending towards Free
> Software, though. It's just a pity that the premises used to get
> there are faulty.
Hopefully, in my restatement of Kent's argument, you can see what
his actual premises and conclusions are. Hopefully, I have not
butchered them in my presentation of them!
> Obviously, though, the whole point of your argument is that you
> *don't* like the conclusion. But that begs the question of *why*
> you don't want to see the spread of Free Software.
Perhaps it's a bit more clear why Kent has gone on record as being
in opposition to the "damage" he sees being done by "free"
software.
> The answer at the moment appears to me to go along the lines of:
> "I don't think I can get rich on Free Software." That
> Ayn-Rand-style-greed-is-good-capitalist-ethic seems like a lame
> reason to me, so it may not be true, but you have not provided any
> other.
Kent has gone on record as saying that he doesn't ever expect to
get "rich" on proprietary software either. He just wants to be able
to get by and live comfortably. Although he has derived some
portion (hopefully, not an insignificant portion, given the amount
of work it took) of his income from writing documentation on the
ANSI CL standard, his primary means of earning money is through
programming.
There's no need to mischaracterize Kent's position. There is
every reason to give him the respect and acknowledge his dignity as
a human being who faces potentially difficult choices.
> You have astutely avoided stipulating how Free Software is
> supposed to harm, rather than benefit society
You seem to have missed the earlier parts of this thread. Or you
have, perhaps, misunderstood them. Indeed, it has been clearly
stated how "free software" has harmful impacts, more than once by
Kent.
> (as opposed to how it might harm some hypothetical
> emperor's-new-clothes-economic-system).
Kent has not proposed any new economic systems. He is merely
applying his insight regarding "free software" to the present
economic system that we have here in the United States.
> All you have claimed ... is that competition becomes harder and
> prices drop, which doesn't seem too bad a thing to me, from a
> capitalist perspective.
As a consumer, you should be very happy when prices drop.
However, that is a "consumerist" perspective, not a "capitalist"
one. Perhaps you meant to say that it seems to be in line with what
you have come to *expect* from capitalism.
A capitalist, on the contrary, is very *unhappy* to see the profit
margins drop (which is the result of competition increasing and
prices falling). Consequently, the capitalist will seek to invest
his capital in a better investment (one that yields a higher rate of
return for the same or less risk).
> Of course, that scenario may have a whole different appearance to
> those who just want to get rich quick, as they say.
It isn't a matter of getting rich quick. It is a matter of
getting the best rate of return on your investment. When the risk
is perceived as being too high or the return is perceived as being
too low, capital flight ensues.
> The question is also begged about why you even want to discuss how
> Free Software impacts on your ideas of economics. Assuming that you
> are not someone who likes wasting time in pointless debates, it
> would seem logical to conclude that you think something should be
> *done* about it.
Again, you seem to have not read the entire thread (nor even all
of Kent's contribution to same). He states quite clearly why *he*
is involved in this discussion.
> So then, you are either advocating *controlled* markets in which
> people's freedoms are suppressed (much as they are in today's
> markets, so this would only be an extension of current reality,
> really),
Kent has clearly stated that he perceives "free software" as
engendering a situation in which people (on average) are compelled
to use it, as the cost to not do so would exceed most people's
ability to afford it.
One can certainlly argue, and others have already, that a person
is *always* free to pay a price, no matter how unreasonably high,
to attempt to live according to principles.
> or you are on some sort of crusade to educate others into some form
> of ideology (your word) in which the capitalist dictum of short
> term profit maximisation no longer holds sway.
Kent is trying to moblize (initiate?) a political consciousness
amongst Lispers to forstall the potential catastrophe he sees on the
horizon.
Kent writes:
>> I will simply observe that you are being dismissive of my point of
>> view. I have not been similarly dismissive of the free software
>> point of view.
David Trudgett replies:
> I don't think this is a fair thing to say to someone who has
> demolished your argument.
Perhaps you can now see that you have failed to even address
Kent's argument.
> My views probably *do* appear dismissive to you, of course, but
> only because Free Software does not live within your capitalist
> conception of economics into which you are trying to shoe horn it.
At this point, software doesn't live at all. People, on the other
hand, do as far as we can tell. Consequently, it is necessary to
discuss these things in terms that are actually applicable.
Kent (and I) live in a (more or less) capitalist (more or less)
free-market economy. It would be lacking in pragmatism for us to
discuss how to conduct ourselves in an economic system other than
the one we live under (at present), as there is no evidence of any
significant change in the medium term.
> The fact that Free Software plays so *well* with the capitalist
> paradigm is the thing to wonder at here, for it has nothing
> whatsoever to do with that paradigm.
It's not very surprising to me at all.
Some portion of the "free software" available was created at US
tax-payer expense. The terms of the contract stipulated that the
software was to be free for use by others, so as to not unfairly
advantage the contractors. Others were persuaded to donate
similarly.
Still other portions of the "free software" were created under the
auspices (and with the encouragement) of the Free Software
Foundation. I think you do RMS a disservice when you "marvel" at
how well his conception of a software collective "plays within the
capitalist paradigm".
Whatever one may think about RMS, he's not an idiot.
What about the work of the (largely, if not entirely, US Federally
funded) AI community at MIT which resulted in no fewer than *three*
commercializations of the CADR (Lisp Machines Incorporated,
Symbolics and Texas Insturments Explorers)?
What about RMS anger at James Gosling's decision to sell the
Unix-port of emacs to Unipress?
What about the success of Unix itself [particularly the large
advantage it enjoyed due to the improvements contributed by the CSRG
at Berkeley]?
And don't overlook the fact that "back in the day" users were
encouraged by hardware vendors (who didn't forsee the
commoditization of their market) to make free software available to
each other in order to improve hardware sales!
I'm certainly not surprised that he picked up on the idea that
there was a place for "free software" within the capitalist system.
Indeed, with his insistence that Gnu software should have *more*
features and use potentinally sub-optimal algorithms compared to the
"standard" alternatives, it's hard not to conclude that he has a
vested interest in hardware vendors of one ilk or another (RAM
vendors, perhaps?)
--jon
Jon Boone wrote:
> David Trudgett replies:
> > My views probably *do* appear dismissive to you, of course, but
> > only because Free Software does not live within your capitalist
> > conception of economics into which you are trying to shoe horn it.
>
> Kent (and I) live in a (more or less) capitalist (more or less)
> free-market economy. It would be lacking in pragmatism for us to
> discuss how to conduct ourselves in an economic system other than
> the one we live under (at present), as there is no evidence of any
> significant change in the medium term.
I've met some rational people who, upon learning that our system is
neither capitalist nor free market, learn the rules of the game to be
successful. To this end, I think spending some amount of time
familiarizing oneself about alternatives is worthwhile.
So, one billionaire investor offered a more real view of the
stockmarket than most people will ever find.
http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/2252572946170125/
And we can read a millionaire's explanation on how smart people
circumvent unfortunate properties of free markets like "perfect market
information" and "rational decisionmaking."
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
> > You have astutely avoided stipulating how Free Software is
> > supposed to harm, rather than benefit society
>
> You seem to have missed the earlier parts of this thread. Or you
> have, perhaps, misunderstood them. Indeed, it has been clearly
> stated how "free software" has harmful impacts, more than once by
> Kent.
Stallman points out potential harms maybe even more clearly. No one
leaves his talks with the impression they'll become rich off free
software.
I think we have to look elsewhere for sources of reality distortion.
And we can easily name them. (Many connected with the "opensource"
movement, for example.)
From: David Trudgett
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m364xqvjom.fsf@rr.trudgett>
Jon Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
>
> First, you must recall that Kent is discussing a commoditized
> market. In such a situation, you can't compete on issues like
> "quality, timeliness, innovation, trendiness, style, locality, and
> so on and so forth."
Hi Jon!
Thanks for your rather excellent analysis, to which I promise to attempt
a half decent reply when I have the time in the next day or so. I'm
rather busy at the moment, and this stuff takes time!
Happy Lisping,
David
--
David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/
You wu hun cheng
Xian tian di sheng.
-- Laozi, Dao De Jing, Chapter 25
Trans:
"There was something in a state of fusion
Before the heavens and the earth came into existence."
From: Jon Boone
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3ll6mfi48.fsf@laptopni.corp.fast.net>
David Trudgett <······@zeta.org.au.nospamplease> writes:
> Hi Jon!
>
> Thanks for your rather excellent analysis, to which I promise to
> attempt a half decent reply when I have the time in the next day or
> so. I'm rather busy at the moment, and this stuff takes time!
I can understand. My verbosity cost me 2.5 hours last night. :-)
> Happy Lisping,
And the same to you!
--jon
From: David Trudgett
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3sm0r2x7s.fsf@rr.trudgett>
Jon Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> David Trudgett <······@zeta.org.au.nospamplease> writes:
>
>> Hi Jon!
>>
>> Thanks for your rather excellent analysis, to which I promise to
>> attempt a half decent reply when I have the time in the next day or
>> so. I'm rather busy at the moment, and this stuff takes time!
>
> I can understand. My verbosity cost me 2.5 hours last night. :-)
My reply has been delayed a little due to my father being in hospital
for cardiovascular surgery. I'm sure I'll get around to writing
something worth reading soon.
All the best,
David
--
David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/
You have never been invaded and never been under dictatorship. So
like the frog in the boiling water you may not realize until it's too
late that you've lost your capacity to think for yourselves and accept
personal responsibility. That is the quiet danger facing America.
-- Lech Walesa
(Leader of Poland's Solidarity union &
President of Poland 1990-1995)
From: David Trudgett
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3wtq069zw.fsf@rr.trudgett>
Jon Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> First, you must recall that Kent is discussing a commoditized
> market. In such a situation, you can't compete on issues like
> "quality, timeliness, innovation, trendiness, style, locality, and
> so on and so forth."
Well, the fact is that I don't recall Kent mentioning that he has been
only concerned with commoditised markets. The person who seems to be
using that term quite frequently is one... Jon Boone. If Kent is
indeed only concerned with so-called "commoditised" markets, then he
is saying something much less interesting than that for which I had
originally given him credit.
I recall Kent saying things like (26 April):
> The real pain of free software is that one can't afford NOT to use
> it. By driving down the prices people can charge, one has no more
> margin left on their products to buy commercial software!
No mention of commoditised markets, only the implication that price
is the only object of competition. As I said, this is most certainly
false in the general case, and the argument is by no means close to
being proved for the special case of a commodity market.
In relation to this, Kent is on record as having said (3 May):
> The problem with free software is that it is opting out of the
> market.
and (28 April):
> which is the only thing I've criticized--its use as a panacea.
The first statement correctly acknowledges that Free Software is
deeply subversive in that it exists independently of the capitalist
concept of "market" (a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist can only conceive
of this as "opting out", when in fact it is a case of refusing to "opt
in"). This, of course, means that Free Software has nothing to do with
"commoditised" markets or any other sort of capitalist market
concept. Therefore, we have to be clear in understanding that Free
Software cannot be a problem *within* commoditised markets, because
it does not exist within them. The essence of the problem Kent
is complaining about is that people who choose to live by the
principle of free cooperation and sharing (in this case, of abstract
ideas, and information) are going to sooner or later have a
curtailment effect on the system of greed that is embodied in
capitalism at a fundamental level. This is an unsurprising conclusion.
In the second statement, Kent apparently is only critical of "free
software's" [he doesn't capitalise it, possibly because he thinks the
only relevant attribute of Free Software is its low price] use as a
cure-all. It's difficult to think of a clearer indication that Kent
has set up a straw man argument: I hardly think that anyone in the
Free Software or Open Source scene seriously believes that open source
or Free Software is going to make all the world's ills better, or even
only all the world's economic ills. It is quite apparent, then, by his
own words, that there is no substance to Kent's argument, which in
that case amounts to no more than FUD. That is, of course, unless Kent
meant something other than what he actually said: i.e., that he was
being perhaps dishonest and is actually criticising a lot more about
Free Software than a claim that some people somewhere see it as a
panacea.
In other places, Kent criticises what he claims is some type of
naivety on the part of Free Software developers that their software
can cause no harm and that the effects are entirely good. This is
really another sort of straw man argument, for I have never witnessed
anyone make such a claim. Everything comes at a cost (which can be
viewed as some sort of harm). Digging minerals out of the ground
causes harm to the landscape and ecosystems. That pure capitalists
aren't concerned about these "externalities" is neither here nor
there. They are harms in someone's eyes, and harms that probably had
to occur in order for the reader to be reading these words on a
computer screen this very moment.
What Kent is accusing Free Software developers of, is the same thing
of which he could accuse secret, proprietary software developers who
sell their binary-only software on a capitalist market: the sin of
assuming that only good can flow from their actions. We do not, of
course, see Kent exhorting these developers to think about the harm
that their greed has upon others (including the visitation of violence
upon them), but instead that Free Software developers should be
cognizant of the harm that their actions could have on the greedy (a
harm, if any, that does not involve violence).
> A commoditized market is one where there is very little room for
> effective differentiation. What small margins are available in this
> market are quickly eaten up by the other competitors attempts to
> wrangle for an additional small % of market share.
So, at this moment, we are talking about commoditised markets. Let's
look for a moment at the commoditised market for home PCs and the
operating systems that run on them. According to your theory, there is
very little room for differentiation in this market. Unfortunately,
your theory is wrong, because there is quite a lot of differentiation
in this market place, and competition is occurring over those very
qualities that are different.
The first thing to notice about this commodity market is that
Microsoft dominates it in a monopolistic manner, yet they also charge
a premium for their products, despite the fact that there are low cost
or zero cost alternatives. Why is this the case? Many reasons. For
example, if I go down to the shop to buy a new PC on which to run
Linux, the first thing I usually need to do is remove Windows from
it. That is because Windows essentially came free with the hardware
(actually a hidden cost, but a ubiquitous one, so virtually
indistinguishable from real zero cost from the consumer's
perspective). If I want to avoid Windows bundling, I either need to
build my own computer (which I usually do), or find a supplier who
charges less for computers without Windows installed (increasingly
hard to do).
Notice that we have a commodity market in the capitalist sense (in
which one good from one supplier is mostly interchangeable with
another good from another supplier), yet Windows loses a percentage of
the market to those who value, for example, freedom or personal power
(in the case of Free Software), or those who value elegance and
simplicity and ease of use and reliability (in the case of Apple
computers and their gratis operating system [it comes effectively free
with the box, just like Windows]). This is not competition on price.
Now, Kent would presumably say that Free Software is depressing the
price that Microsoft could otherwise be charging for Windows, even
though that is patently absurd, because not only are both Microsoft
and Apple practically giving away their operating systems with the
hardware in a market dominated by their proprietary products, and
making their main income in other ways, they would also be forced to
do the same if the only competitors in the market were proprietary
systems. That is the nature of "commodity", after all, and
commoditisation would happen with or without Free Software.
Yet we see that neither Microsoft nor Apple are devaluing their
programmers and paying them a pittance (or any less) merely because of
Free Software's existence, nor because they can grab unprotected BSD
software and incorporate it into their proprietary products.
This proves that even in a monopolistically controlled market, Free
Software cannot be blamed for the commoditisation process, nor for
"loss" of profits: this is the result of the existence of any sort of
competition in the supply of the commodity, and this, furthermore, is
what people say is "good" about capitalism.
It also proves something else: software is not really a commodity,
like wheat is, for instance. If it were, then just as a world supplier
of free wheat would quickly obliterate all competition in that market,
then any supplier of free operating systems (or other software) would
quickly obliterate that software market. This has not happened, and I
don't believe that it will ever happen any time before the
obliteration of capitalist markets altogether. That is because wheat
is wheat: it is a commodity in the sense that any wheat is
substitutable for any other wheat [the GM brigade are working to fix
that flaw in the system]; whereas, software is not software:
no two pieces of software can ever be truly interchangeable. Kent uses
Emacs, for example, because it is better than the "equivalent"
Microsoft rubbish, not because it is cheaper.
> The labor involved in producing these goods and services we consume
> is a significant component of the overall cost, especially when we
> are discussing commoditized goods and services. At this point, the
> producer of a commoditized good seeks to lower a portion of this
> significant labor cost.
Well, there is a good argument to say that the labour involved in
producing *any* good or service, is the only real measure of its
*value* or cost in a market economy (capitalist or otherwise). This is
(I'm sure you know) the Labour Theory of Value, which goes back to the
time of John Locke (17th century), but given increased currency by
Marx.
Just to be picky (:-)), services cannot be commodities. Commodities
include things like wheat, electricity, oil, bulk chemicals, computer
chips (especially RAM), Internet bandwidth, and so on. To apply the
word 'commodity' to a pure service (labour) is an incorrect use of the
term, and this type of unclear thinking leads to abuses like referring
to one's time as a "commodity" when it is no such thing.
> This is just an observation that as a new round of commoditization
> occurs, all manufacturers adopt similar (if not identical) modes of
> production. If your competitor uses "gratis" software and it is
> effective at reducing their costs (with a consequent lowering in the
> price of their goods/services), then you are compelled (if you want
> to stay in this market) to follow suit.
So, what you're saying is that margins are so low in the wheat
commodity market, for example, that none of the players can afford to,
for example, pay for Windows software, but must instead use Linux or
Free BSD or some other gratis software in order to remain
competitive. Well, I just don't see that ever happening in the
universe that I know. It's like saying that they will all soon be
living in tents to save on accommodation costs. It's just not
realistic and will never happen.
Although the margins on commodities are low, the profits are very high
because of the trade volume. Look at Microsoft and the commodity
desktop market. This will always be the case in commodity markets:
volume trumps margin: that's why they're commodity markets.
What you're saying in actuality is that small players will never be
able to compete in the big commodity markets because their volume will
never make up for the low margin. This is indeed quite true, and is
why these markets are dominated by very few suppliers.
> Actually, none of those conditionals are necessary, because Kent had
> already established that he was discussing the commoditized
> marketplace. Consequently, the conditionals had already been
> answered in a particular fashion. To wit:
I'm sorry if I missed it, but I really can't find anywhere in the
thread where Kent established that he was exclusively discussing a
"commoditised marketplace". All he did *imply*, as far as I've seen,
is that competition would be only on the basis of price. This *seems*
to imply that he *might* be talking about commodity markets, but he
never actually said that. If he did, then I obviously didn't see it,
and I therefore apologise. However, in that case, Kent is talking
about something of far less interest than that which he gave the
impression he was talking about.
> 1. the company is presumed to be attempting to compete in an
> established market place
>
> 2. the market place is presumed to have been commoditized, which
> means that the only competition is on price basis
>
> 3. price based competition, it is necessary to cut all costs that
> can be cut. Sometimes costs of materials can be cut (and if
> that can be done, it will be). Eventually, the only costs to be
> decreased will be those associated with labor.
By the first premise, I assume you mean that the "company" is already
part of the established market, and not that it is a new competitor
wishing to gain entry to the market.
By the second premise, we are therefore limiting the discussion to
true commodities, like, wheat, oil, screws, nuts, bolts, and so
on. That's because other markets that are loosely referred to as
"commodity" markets, like the desktop operating system market, are not
true commodity markets at all, because competition occurs around other
qualities of the product besides price, as well as around attributes
of the market structure itself (such as leveraging monopolistic
privilege).
The third premise is simply untrue. In the true commodity markets,
profits are high even though margins may be low (depending on market
supply and demand, and on market structure, such as trade tariffs). If
certain costs, such as software costs are very small in relation to
the profit generated (as they most certainly are in these true
commodity markets), then there is no pressure to reduce those costs
because the effect on the bottom line is insignificant. To say that my
electricity supplier is ever going to be pressured into putting Linux
on the desktop to remain competitive is just too farcical for me to
even contemplate.
As for labour being the *last* cost to get the chop in corporate
environments, I can say that that's not a realistic appraisal of the
situation. Labour is the *first* thing on the mind of management to
get the corporate downsizing chop, because it is such a major
"expense". So, in agribusiness, we have, for example, long had the use
of the combine harvester, which is a great drudgery saving device, but
which was introduced for one reason: to save on labour. Would I be
correct in guessing that this device was invented after the end of
slavery in the U.S.?
> If
>
> 1. "free software" tends toward a "gratis" valuation of same,
>
> [I recall that Kent thinks this is true. There is some evidence
> that this may be so.]
>
> *and*
>
> 2. "free software" is pursued with the aim of commoditizing
> markets
>
> [I recall that Kent thinks that this is true, for at least *some*
> "free software" developers. There is some evidence that this may
> be so.]
>
> *then*
>
> 3. as "free software" commoditizes market places, it drives up
> the likelyhood of a given market adopting "free software" in
> an effort ot cut costs.
>
I'm afraid this argument is really nonsensical when you look at it
carefully. An unstated premise, for instance, is that Free Software is
*able* to "commoditise" markets. That premise, is, I'm afraid,
complete cods-wallop, you'll be pleased to hear. Markets can only be
"commoditised" when the products in those markets are produced in
great quantities according to agreed quality standards. The only true
commodity markets possible are those that involve physical goods:
under non-totalitarian conditions, software can never be a commodity,
and neither can labour. Labour used to be a commodity, if you recall,
in the great days of American slavery. Software could possibly also
become a commodity in the future, but only under a brave new
totalitarian state ruled by laws with initials like DMCA. If that's
the sort of scenario we are talking about, then naturally Free
Software is a threat to that, and the solution is to throw all those
"sharing" freaks into jail and turn them into a free labour commodity.
On a different note, the premise that Free Software tends towards a
gratis valuation is interesting in more than one way. First, the value
of Free Software is not to be found in its price. Its value is
independent of what people are willing to pay for it, which is also
independent of its utility to those people. The value of software is
also independent of its direct utility.
In the age of the Internet, the amount that most of us are willing to
pay for Emacs, for instance, is zero currency units. That's because of
its availability. If I were living on an island with no communications
equipment, then I might have to pay someone to burn a CD and ship it
to me. If my access to it were even more restricted than that, then I
might be "forced" to pay a much higher price in order to obtain
it. The value of the software is, however, still the same, regardless
of how much I am willing to pay for it, given my current set of
circumstances.
Similarly, Emacs may be very useful to me, even though I am not
willing to pay anything for it. Conversely, I may be willing to pay a
lot for it, even if it is not of any use to me. I may, for example, be
simply wanting to support the author, or I may be buying it for
someone else.
Lastly, software has other values besides direct utility. I may
purchase Emacs, or obtain it free of charge, simply in order to learn
about techniques used to create text editors, or about coding
methodologies in general. I may obtain another piece of Free Software
for its artistic merit, or its mathematical elegance, or for its
economy of expression. I may make use of (or pretend to use) another
piece of Free Software simply because of its snob or brag value,
rather than for any reason pertaining to what it can do for me.
Another way that the premise is interesting is to be found in the
encompassing "meta-premise", if you'll forgive the terminology. This
is the premise or the belief that software is something that can be
purchased under normal circumstances. However, this assumption is not
true. Software is not inherently a product that can be bought and sold
like a material object. It obeys natural laws that pertain to its own
essence, which is *not* the same as a physical object.
Software is nothing but information that can be copied at near zero
cost, and without taking anything away from the original. And about
this particular quality of a thing, St Augustinus had something very
interesting to say in the fourth century:
Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur
et non datur, nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est.
For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others,
it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared.
Trying to turn software into property involves violating its natural
essence, and the only way it is possible to so violate it is to
employ violence against people in order to prevent them from sharing
with each other. This violence, while doomed to failure in stopping
people from sharing with each other, could however create a very
severe, totalitarian society driven by corporate greed.
In May 2001, Bruce Schneier, an information systems security expert,
had the following things to say about the impossibility of violating
the essence of digital information:
If you have a digital file -- text, music, video, or whatever --
you can make as many copies of that file as you want, do whatever
you want with the copies. This is a natural law of the digital
world, and makes copying on the Internet different from copying
Rolex watches or Louis Vuitton luggage.
...
The end result will be failure. All digital copy protection
schemes can be broken, and once they are, the breaks will be
distributed...law or no law. Average users will be able to
download these tools from Web sites that the laws have no
jurisdiction over. Pirated digital content will be generally
available on the Web. Everyone will have access.
The industry's only solution is to accept the
inevitable. Unrestricted distribution is a natural law of digital
content, and those who figure out how to leverage that natural law
will make money. There are many ways to make money other than
charging for a scarce commodity. Radio and television are
advertiser funded; there is no attempt to charge people for each
program they watch. The BBC is funded by taxation. Many art
projects are publicly funded, or funded by patronage. Stock data
is free, but costs money if you want it immediately. Open source
software is given away, but users pay for manuals and tech
support: charging for the relationship. The Grateful Dead became a
top-grossing band by allowing people to tape their concerts and
give away recordings; they charged for performances. There are
models based on subscription, government licensing, marketing
tie-ins, and product placement.
Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can
be made not wet. The entertainment industry's two-pronged
offensive will have far-reaching effects -- its enlistment of the
legal system erodes fair use and necessitates increased
surveillance, and its attempt to turn computers into an Internet
Entertainment Platform destroys the very thing that makes
computers so useful -- but will fail in its intent. The Internet
is not the death of copyright, any more than radio and television
were. It's just different. We need business models that respect
the natural laws of the digital world instead of fighting them.
> 6. There will be a corresponding decrease (on average) in the
> value that is placed on the labor involved in creating
> software.
I don't agree that this is a reasonable conclusion based on the
given premises, which are also speculative. Programmers will always be
valued for their ability to create software that meets a need that is
not yet met. (Let's just hope that these programmers remain human,
because then the stated conclusion will be very true indeed.) If Free
Software (or any other software) meets a need, then it will be used in
preference to utilising valuable labour, which could be deployed to
better effect elsewhere.
Conclusion six implicitly assumes that there is a finite "programming
space", which, once filled up by Free Software, will leave no value
for programming labour. This is a false premise, and the conclusion
drawn from it does not hold.
> 7. "free software" developers are shooting themselves in the foot
For some definition of 'shooting' and some definition of 'foot'? This
is so indefinite as to not constitute a conclusion at all,
unfortunately. Perhaps you could be more specific.
> Perhaps it's a bit more clear why Kent has gone on record as being
> in opposition to the "damage" he sees being done by "free"
> software.
I don't think Kent has really demonstrated that Free Software is even
*able* to cause any sort of "damage" that would be worth wasting so
many words on it. The other aspect is that this "damage" is only in
relation to the viability of a certain subset of capitalist markets
that could be termed "commodity" markets. Those who don't worship the
god of capitalism and markets (including "commodity" markets) may not
see this as damage, but rather as progress.
The situation right now is that capitalism is dying, and is currently
going through its last death throes. This process is being
thoughtfully hastened along by the apocalyptic madmen and sociopaths
who think they are running America, along with the sociopaths running
Britain, Australia, and other "countries".
At the moment, it looks like a fascist, totalitarian state will
replace what was formerly known as capitalism. Oh, the term will still
be used, just as 'communism' was used in Russia even though it
practised no such creed (see Goldman's "There is no communism in
Russia",
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/goldman/there-is-no-communism-in-russia_emma-goldman.html).
So, you see, any talk of "free" markets, or markets even approaching
freedom, is just laughable, as is any concern about the dangers of
Free Software to such a hypothetical free market. Right now, Americans
are lucky enough to be able to still read and write about subjects
like this, but that freedom is about to end, unless *you* individually
stand up and do something about it, and stop being the frog in rapidly
heating water.
> There's no need to mischaracterize Kent's position. There is
> every reason to give him the respect and acknowledge his dignity as
> a human being who faces potentially difficult choices.
Kent certainly has my sympathies as a human being. We are both in a
similar situation right now. And I certainly don't want to
deliberately mischaracterise his position. At the same time, because
of Kent's obvious intelligence, I expect him to live up to high
standards, and to say what he means, clearly. He, for instance,
continually wonders why people say that he is a whinger, but doesn't
seem to realise that the reason is that he is making his statements be
about himself (i.e., a whinge). It's really no wonder that that comes
across as a whining tone, but he wouldn't have trouble with people
misunderstanding him if he had spoken clearly in the first place,
leaving out the personal statements that are easily interpreted as
"woe is me."
He could also drop the arrogance, too. Statements that go something
like, "I don't know how to say this any more clearly," don't go down
well with people. And his messages are replete with subtle and not so
subtle put downs like that. So, if I've been a bit brutal in my
treatment of Kent, then I apologise, but his own arrogance could have
had a part to play in that.
> You seem to have missed the earlier parts of this thread. Or you
> have, perhaps, misunderstood them. Indeed, it has been clearly
I have certainly not hung on his every word, but I did go back through
this thread on Google to see if I had missed anything substantive. I
can't say that I did, and he certainly has never stated his position
anywhere nearly as clearly as you've stated it for him.
It's certainly possible that he may have said things prior to the
current thread that I didn't see. Perhaps you take this knowledge of
his position for granted, but I was only going by what he said in the
current thread, as I have no knowledge of previous threads on the
subject.
In going back through his statements, though, I did find some very
interesting things, which I will now unfairly pick on, since Kent may
have opted out of this conversation, like:
> What's sad is that people think I'm complaining just for me.
(I.e., he *is* complaining, and it *is* about himself, but not *just*
for himself?).
> I went through a very generous time in my college days myself.
> I'm just grown up now. I see things differently.
(I.e., now he's a jaded old man? who doesn't have the Christian
values of sharing and generosity? because only kids believe in that
stuff?)
> ...a whole industry of economically disempowered people.
(I.e., ignoring spiritual power in favour of temporal power? the same
mistake that Jesus nearly made when he was tempted by Satan?)
> Yes, there are jobs. But there should be opportunities to get rich.
(No comment.)
> What they need to do is to go abroad and help people in other
> countries unionize.
(And good luck braving U.S. funded death squads?)
> Everyone keeps saying I'm complaining about me personally. Whining.
> It's inevitable that we all reason somewhat from our own experience.
(Is it?)
> This talk of "important rewards other than money" is fine,
> but as you get older, you realize that money is still critical to
> living comfortably.
(An excuse for meanness of spirit? Living comfortably? by whose
standards? and what is meant by "money" anyway? because "money" that
is allowed to have "value" in itself instead of being merely a
convenient form of accounting is a debased form of money. hence we
have what people used to call the sin of usury.)
> In fact, it's the GPL people who are all about me, me, me and what I
> as an individual have a right to.
(The "GPL people" are about no such thing, quite obviously. It's a
general statement that is just as false as any general statement, like
one that begins with, "All those capitalist people..." The GPL is
about giving people the freedom to use and extend software, without
giving them the right to take it as their own private property.)
> Caring for others is a luxury.
(Can't imagine Jesus saying this. No, I don't believe he ever said
anything about looking after number one first, and then see about
looking after others. I'm pretty sure about that. Still, I have no
idea if Kent is actually a Christian or not. If I had to guess... no I
won't do that.)
> Communism was tried, and we saw its worst case get worse than
> we have now.
(Communism was never tried. Only people who don't know what communism
is say this.)
So much for picking on poor old Kent. As I said, I *do* play hard
ball, and he *does* have a right of reply. Perhaps I've been
unfair. If so, I'm sure Kent or someone else can point out why and
where. And then it'll be time for me to apologise if I'm wrong.
>> (as opposed to how it might harm some hypothetical
>> emperor's-new-clothes-economic-system).
>
> Kent has not proposed any new economic systems. He is merely
> applying his insight regarding "free software" to the present
> economic system that we have here in the United States.
My emperor's new clothes comment was not intended to imply that Kent
was making up a new economic system or theory. My comment would make
no sense if that were the case. An economic theory could only be an
emperor's-new-clothes one if it were generally accepted as wonderful
and fine and elegant and correct by the great masses of people who
really see that it is insubstantial, pretentious, unreal and
hypothetical, but who are afraid to say so for fear of looking
stupid. That is the case with today's capitalist economic "theories"
so beloved by our rulers.
No doubt there is some actual, real economic system in operation in
the United States (not to mention elsewhere), but whether it bears any
resemblance to economists' theories is the real sixty four million
dollar question.
> One can certainlly argue, and others have already, that a person
> is *always* free to pay a price, no matter how unreasonably high,
> to attempt to live according to principles.
Principles have no price. Either you have them or you don't.
Furthermore, the *real* choice is whether to remain in a particular
commoditised market, as opposed to doing something else for a
living. No one has any god-given right to pursue a living in any
particular way.
> Perhaps you can now see that you have failed to even address
> Kent's argument.
As a matter of fact, as I said before, Kent's "argument" is
demolished. I perhaps didn't demolish it from within its own stated
frames of reference, but this is real life, not debating school. I
don't expect that you or Kent will be happy to accept my demolition
work, but that is beside the point, really. The argument is demolished
to my satisfaction, and one's own judgement is the only one that
matters in the end, isn't it? Other people can make their own
judgement independently of any claims I may make.
> I think you do RMS a disservice when you "marvel" at how well his
> conception of a software collective "plays within the capitalist
> paradigm".
How do you mean, exactly? Do you somehow think that I believe this was
an accident on RMS's behalf?
> What about RMS anger at James Gosling's decision to sell the
> Unix-port of emacs to Unipress?
I'm not in the business of defending Stallman's alleged vices. As if
that has anything to do with Free Software. You know, Free Software is
bigger than Stallman and whatever motives, good or bad, he may have
been harbouring in the past. It's a kind of argumentum ad hominem to
bring up or hint at possible imperfections in Stallman in order to
discredit the Free Software philosophy. It's a bit like holding GWB up
as a shining example of Christianity: it doesn't prove anything except
human imperfection.
David
--
David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/
Every war, even the most humanely conducted, with all its ordinary
consequences, the destruction of harvests, robberies, the license and
debauchery, and the murder with the justifications of its necessity
and justice, the exaltation and glorification of military exploits,
the worship of the flag, the patriotic sentiments, the feigned
solicitude for the wounded, and so on, does more in one year to
pervert men's minds than thousands of robberies, murders, and arsons
perpetrated during hundreds of years by individual men under the
influence of passion.
-- Leo Tolstoy, "The Kingdom of God is Within You"
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uwtq0cjqu.fsf@nhplace.com>
David Trudgett <······@zeta.org.au.nospamplease> writes:
> Jon Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
>
> > First, you must recall that Kent is discussing a commoditized
> > market. In such a situation, you can't compete on issues like
> > "quality, timeliness, innovation, trendiness, style, locality, and
> > so on and so forth."
>
> Well, the fact is that I don't recall Kent mentioning that he has been
> only concerned with commoditised markets.
Not "only".
But I when I say they are not a panacea, one of the things I have
repeatedly said is they have _particular_ ill effects in certain
circumstances more than others, and I wish people would pay attention
to the specific context-dependent effects.
As such, I have attempted to cite particular contexts in which there
are problems. Please don't let my sometimes entry into a specific
context lose the general message that "context matters". Please don't
let my sometimes failure to go into a specific context make you think
that I am making universal statements of goodness or badness intended
to span the entire industry.
> The person who seems to be
> using that term quite frequently is one... Jon Boone. If Kent is
> indeed only concerned with so-called "commoditised" markets, then he
> is saying something much less interesting than that for which I had
> originally given him credit.
I am not "only" speaking of commoditized markets, but even here you are
limiting yourself (and me, as a consequence) if you think that the only
possibility if I am not "only" speaking of commoditized markets is that
I am not speaking about nor ever have spoken them at all. It is possible
to speak of something without speaking of something to the exclusion of
all else. It is possible to speak of something as an example of a broader
point.
A meta-observation about myself is that even when speaking generally,
I prefer to do so by speaking about specifics. Generalities are often
specifics-free, and this limits their discussion to things about which
you have broad rules. When trying to determine or observe general
rules, it's necessary to begin from specific systems. So in trying to
learn how games work, I might study tic-tac-toe or chess, not a book
on general game theory. To study economic impact, I might ask a few
people who were impacted, not a few theoreticians. That's just me.
Others do it differently. But don't be fooled by me talking specifics
to think that I only think specifically.
> I recall Kent saying things like (26 April):
>
> > The real pain of free software is that one can't afford NOT to use
> > it. By driving down the prices people can charge, one has no more
> > margin left on their products to buy commercial software!
I write a lot of text and once in a while (ok, maybe even often) I get
critical words wrong. I probably should have said "A real pain". This
is a common error of mine. Does it fix your understanding?
> No mention of commoditised markets, only the implication that price
> is the only object of competition.
I have no formal training in economics, but from what I do know of it,
this would be a fine working definition of "commodity".
> As I said, this is most certainly
> false in the general case, and the argument is by no means close to
> being proved for the special case of a commodity market.
I'd be interested to hear a sketch of how the argument I gave were
disproved. It's the first of the two messages of mine quoted below
for which message id's are given, if that helps you find it.
> In relation to this, Kent is on record as having said (3 May):
>
> > The problem with free software is that it is opting out of the
> > market.
Yes, this is a related problem.
In some ways, this is the same as the commodity problem. That is, by
opting out of the market, it shaves costs by displacing them into
hyperspace, where they need not appear on the balance sheets. This is
a problem for those trying to compete in the same way that dumping is.
It can force someone who legitimately, because they do have to account
for them, out of business.
Structurally, this is a problem for industry because the people forced
out of business appear to me to be, at least syntactically, committed to
the actual business, whereas the mom's and dad's who accidentally funded
the free software might suddenly fail to fund replacements. Just standing
outside, as a consumer and as a person in a country is funded by taxes paid
from business successes, I'd rather have the market favor a solution that
pays a party that's at least actively trying to serve that market and to be
there to serve it tomorrow, employs people, and pays taxes than a solution that
indulges private ego at the expense of being able to be used in business,
employing people, paying taxes, and having any active commitment to be in
the same business tomorrow. I'd also rather reward someone who will hang a
sign out and say "I take responsibility for having created this software,
even to the point of legal responsibility" than someone who hides behind the
fact that they did it for free to provide no backing other than "look at it
yourself" for its usefulness.
But additionally, it is a problem because eventually the fact that
these costs are extra-market costs and not accounted for in the system
makes it hard for competition to occur at the commodity level. The
more the market cranks out excesses, the more it will tend to be the
case that one will notice that things that can be created for free and
by magic are preferred by a greedy public over things that are create
by business. If you're anti-business, come right out and say it. If
you think computer science needs not be a business, that's fine to
say, too. Or, if you think that it's ok for the people who make the
stuff to sell consulting for a living, say that. But personally, I'd
rather not have my car maintenance or insurance sold to me by my car
maker. Why? I want them to make it right the first time. I'd like
them to know that if it's not right the first place, they've lost me
as a customer. I don't feel that with Linux.
> and (28 April):
>
> > which is the only thing I've criticized--its use as a panacea.
That's right. Many people tout specific virtues of free software.
The fact that Postgres has helped to bring down the prices of
commercial dbs (a market that had set its price point unreasonably
high for a while). The fact that Emacs is widely available to
programmers (a market that it seemed like no commercial vendor cared
about). The fact that Microsoft had cornered the market on operating
systems and platform-related products and now has to justify itself (a
monopoly and/or trade practices issue that should have been addressed
better by the courts). I really don't disagree there have been some
positive effects, and I try not to get entangled in beating down someone's
claim that there have been such. It's not relevant to my argument.
By "not a panacea", I mean "citing positive effects does not diminish
negative effects". You can't say the Catholic church isn't fairly directly
responsible for the loss of many lives (due to advocating the non-use of
birth control, leading to AIDS and even just unwanted pregnacies among
married people in cultures too poor to support all of their kids) just by
saying "they've helped a lot of people". One good does not negate another
bad. The answer is "constant tending", "constant thought".
People are told to jump on the free software bandwagon and exercise
freedom by "just writing some" without being instructed about the
impact. People have negative effects and are taught to not care and
to shout down those who mention those negative effects. These are the
"panacea" elements I'm upset about.
Even a good chef or a good hunter will tell you that their tool of
choice, a knife or a rifle (presumably respectively), is not a toy and
should be used carefully. Strong advocates of freedom will still tell
you that if you think your freedom doesn't stop when it infringes
someone else's, you're on the verge of having someone infringe you
back just to put you in your place.
But advocates of free software too often say there is no limit and must
never be even a sense of shame. I'm not asking for shame about positive
uses, I'm asking for a sense that there are negative situations that
require AT LEAST an "oops" and possibly an entire culture of attention,
respect and consideration, etc.
> The first statement correctly acknowledges that Free Software is
> deeply subversive in that it exists independently of the capitalist
> concept of "market"
I don't think most people who do free software are anti-market.
I think some people are deceived or distracted into not thinking hard
about the possibility of specific, unintended, anti-market effects.
I don't tend to push the notion that free software is subversive per se
because it appears to anthropomorphize software in the same useless way
that telling us it's free in the first place does. People are what need
to be free (as in freedom), not software. At least until these programs
are reflective, the need for free software per se is silly. But if I
were to call the software subversive, I fear some people would take that
as me calling them subversive. They might well be. But I don't know their
intent. I only know their sometimes effects. I'm asking them that if this
is NOT their intent--and I think for many this IS not their intent--then
think. Certainly the ones who have subversive intent will not respond to
a polite request from me, and it's relatively pointless for me to try.
> This, of course, means that Free Software has nothing to do with
> "commoditised" markets or any other sort of capitalist market
> concept.
Having nothing to do means having no link with.
You've just been through a discussion on intent. There are more kinds
of links than intent. Effect is another. A discussion of intent does
not disprove a relation of effect, nor many other kinds of relations.
A dismissal such as "nothing to do" is ill-founded here.
> Therefore, we have to be clear in understanding that Free
> Software cannot be a problem *within* commoditised markets, because
> it does not exist within them.
This statement has so little meaning to me you're going to have to
restate it if you want me to make sense of it.
Notwithstanding your statement, it's possible that free software is used
within commodity markets. I don't know that it is. But I don't see a
scientific proof that it's not. And it seems more probable than not that
it might be. The world is a big place and you've barely scratched the
surface of the set of possibilities you'd have to argue to make a convincing
case on this one.
> The essence of the problem Kent
> is
"appears to be", please. I try to do this, and will apologize where I've
failed. Please offer me the same courtesy.
> complaining about is that people who choose to live by the
> principle of free cooperation and sharing (in this case, of abstract
> ideas, and information) are going to sooner or later have a
> curtailment effect on the system of greed that is embodied in
> capitalism at a fundamental level. This is an unsurprising conclusion.
Since I regard capitalism as simply an alternate mechanism for sharing,
this sells my position quite short.
I once lived in a communal household with some people who believed in
sharing everything equally in the sense of being able to use anything
left in a common area without asking. I put all my things in a non-common
area and was called antisocial. Not so, I alleged. It's not that I don't
see their point, I just don't agree with it. I understand why they think
themselves social and me anti-social, but consider the following alternative
not as a refutation of them, but as simply an alternate consistent point of
view: To me, socialness is about getting to know people. If my friend has
a book and wants it treated a certain way, it is social of me to learn about
my friend and my friend's book. It would not occur to me to use or lend
out my friend's book without asking. To require me to bend to my friends'
rules about giving out all my things is the essence of anti-social to me.
I don't think the people in this household intended that. They are fine
people. But their non-desire to learn my personal preferences says to me
that everything about me that makes me different than a cog in a machine
is irrelevant to them. What is the POINT of socialness if it does not treat
some things as dear and other things not. What little purpose do each of
us have if robbed of that point of distinctiveness.
I like the notion of property. I don't care about controlling others. But
I don't want them to control what is mine. Free software is much like this
communal situation I describe. It says that the people who did not obtain
or produce an item have more say over how it is used than the person who
may have sacrificed to obtain it. In the limit case, it may be a one of a
kind object. How will they know without asking? It may have taken my whole
life to make, or may be the last in existence? If they lend it out and it
cannot be recovered, what is my recourse?
The analogs of this in intellectual space will be harder for people to
understand as youths than as they get older. You may think you will
always produce things that are as sought after as you do now, but you
may one day be surprised. That doesn't mean you have nothing of
value. Just like it doesn't mean classical music offers nothing of
value over rap music. But it still may not sell as well. And you may
one day come to care about that as you continue to try to "sell your
services" in a world full of people who all too frequently confuse a
simple desire to make enough money to survive with greed and exploitation.
Back in the days when I did more math, I once took a course in
queueing theory. I recall very little of the math, but I did get one
take-home lesson that comes up all the time: If you can cook
hamburgers at four per hour and people arrive at your restaurant in a
normally distributed fashion that averages four per hour (each person
wanting one hambuger), you cannot keep up. I think the point is that
if you don't start cooking until they arrive (or even if you do, but
assume they won't eat a cold burger), then you can't use all your
capacity, and once you lose it, you don't get to make it up later.
Meanwhile, they can statistically arrive any time they want, it only
has to average four per hour, so you may get eight in one hour and
none in another. If you think about this effect in terms of how much
money you need to make in order to have a certain average needed
amount throughout your lifetime, it might help you understand why
getting all upset that someone made "more than an hour's wage" for an
hour's work is not necessarily "unfair".
> In the second statement, Kent apparently is only critical of "free
> software's" [he doesn't capitalise it, possibly because he thinks the
> only relevant attribute of Free Software is its low price]
i often don't capitalize things i write. it's sometimes just laziness.
i guess this is a variant on:
"never attribute to malice what can as easily be explained by stupidity."
this is another reason i try hard not to characterize everyone in the
free software movement's intent as the same. people don't always act
with thought behind what they do. (i'd like to improve that, of course,
but i understand it nevertheless. i also understand that perfection
is hard to obtain. but that doesn't imply perfection is a bad goal.
setting goals high and falling short is better than setting them low
and falling short.)
> use as a
> cure-all. It's difficult to think of a clearer indication that Kent
> has set up a straw man argument: I hardly think that anyone in the
> Free Software or Open Source scene seriously believes that open source
> or Free Software is going to make all the world's ills better, or even
> only all the world's economic ills.
This is off-topic. I have never said they do.
What I do think is that many don't think it's going to do any harm.
It's quite a different statement to say "this will fix everything" (which
I don't hear people say) and "this can't really hurt" (which I hear a lot).
Yes it can hurt. It has. And it will.
Will it always? Maybe not. Is the hurt worthwhile? Maybe sometimes.
But let's have a robust discussion of that hurt and not dismiss it.
> It is quite apparent, then, by his
> own words, that there is no substance to Kent's argument, which in
> that case amounts to no more than FUD.
I don't like terms like "FUD", nor even "flaming", etc. because they
appear personally dismissive. They go beyond refuting or even
addressing individual statements and make a meta-statement about the
entire data stream flowing from a person, and are therefore personal.
Personal remarks are not, in my book, an appropriate kind of debate.
You may or may not have noticed, but I'd stopped posting to this
newsgroup for a while after your last post because I was so angry. I
don't like listening to myself rant when I'm angry, so I don't imagine
others like it either. I see words like "dishonest" coming up in the
same paragraph as the FUD remark above was in, and attributed to me.
I definitely don't want to get far enough to reply to those.
There are two sides to every bickering match with the capability of
calling it to a quick end. The side I can control is mine, so I'm
just going to opt out at this point again and spend some more time
cooling. I guess I just wasn't out enough time this time. I'll try
back in another week or two, or in any case when I'm feeling more
capable of appropriate discussion.
--------------------
Oh, and I mentioned above I was going to include some quotes at the end.
These are those:
--------------------
From a message upthread to which you replied, so I assume you read:
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> wrote (in <·············@nhplace.com>):
> Greg Menke <··········@toadmail.com> writes:
>
> > I don't have much sympathy for you. The GPL terms are spelled out very
> > clearly. If you're not willing to accept them, then you are free to not
> > use GPL software.
>
> This is not entirely true. The free market has a way of detecting
> when I use products that are too expensive. If someone sells a
> TiVo-like device and it's made of hardware that can be had at $100,
> free software at $0, and advertising that costs, say $50/unit, and the
> person is expecting profit of $25/unit, for a total cost of $175, then
> to compete, I can't get hardware cheaper than market. Maybe I can be
> clever with advertising, but then so can they, so we'll asymptotically
> reach the same value. I can wiggle down the profit a little, taking
> $24 or $20 or $15 per unit, but there's a limit there. In the end,
> the market squeezes out all the excess. The one place I have to save
> money is to use free software rather tha pay for software development
> and/or commercial software. But then the free software is not use
> "freely". It's forced by the market.
This is, in case you do not recognize it, a reference to commodity price
pressure, notwithstanding my failure to actually flag it by use of the
word. Any time you start enumerating the costs of production and leaving
out the cost of development, you're probably entering the discourse of
a commodity. One of the key characteristics of a commodity is that it's
got competition from someone who didn't have to invent it, probably doesn't
need patent permissions, and only has to worry about cost of production
(including downstream costs like advertising and delivery).
- - - - -
From another message I wrote, again one to which you replied (even quoting
the specific text I again cite here). It's, not coincidentally, the most
recent post I've made to this newsgroup in the last week or two.
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> wrote (in <·············@nhplace.com>):
> It's not defeatist. It's an observation that if I and my competitor
> are selling essentially a commodity, all of the "unnecessary" costs
> will be eventually pushed out. It's a luxury to say one can pay
> someone for software that one can get from somewhere else free when
> your competitor is not doing the same.
- - - - -
From: Alex Farran
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <m3y8afzcrc.fsf@slack1.com>
I'm finding this exchange very interesting. Kent, I think you're
right in saying that one should examine the implications of writing
free software. However, I don't believe that it is quite the threat
to innovation that you suggest it might be. Indeed you could argue
that since all new innovations are built on past achievements, the
free sharing of information encourages innovation. Outside the realm
of software there are many examples of innovation without the benefit
of the limited monopoly granted by copyright and patents (follow link
below for case studies).
The question as I see it is 'To what extent do the monopoly rights
granted by IP law encourage or discourage further innovation?' I'm
not an economist but someone who is has tried to answer that question
at this site http://www.dklevine.com/ and in particular
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm.
In your commodity hardware scenario I think first mover advantage may
be enough justification to continue development of the software. I
think the market would find an equilibrium position somewhere between
relying on volunteers and paying artificially inflated monopoly
prices.
Applying simple logic to people's behaviour can get you the wrong
answer. Peter Seibel's book is successful, even though it's available
for free on line. Perhaps that even helped make it more successful,
particularly as it was available for review while it was being
written.
I hope you find my contribution useful.
Alex
Rajappa Iyer wrote:
> Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> > By "not a panacea", I mean "citing positive effects does not
> > diminish negative effects". You can't say the Catholic church
> > isn't fairly directly responsible for the loss of many lives (due
> > to advocating the non-use of birth control, leading to AIDS and
> > even just unwanted pregnacies among married people in cultures too
> > poor to support all of their kids) just by saying "they've
> > helped a lot of people". One good does not negate another
> > bad. The answer is "constant tending", "constant thought".
>
> If this is the crux of your arguments, then I must say that I find
> it rather unremarkable. Other than ideologues and true believers,
> most people are quite aware that no one system is perfect and a
> panacea for everything.
Actually, it turns out that some in this discussion explained to me
that they're "debating"; that is, "scoring debate points" with "winners
and losers." They find this a good discourse style.
But as someone who has formally debated, I think debaters have clear
incentives to mitigate unpleasant facts and pursue disruptive tactics.
Even unconsciously, just by the rules of debate. This pressure is
significant if people aren't careful. Citations and prep time are
required for a decent debate; and debate is usually dishonest anyway.
But you're very right about ideology. I have many cites from very top
journalists (and Paul Graham) who recently explain that journalism is
mostly propaganda.
http://www.c-span.org/search/basic.asp?ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&BasicQueryText=jon+stewart
http://pentaside.org/article/journalist-resignation.html
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/16/1329245
http://www.cjrdaily.org/archives/001386.asp
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
The more people listen to mainstream news, the more they're
propagandized. I welcome anyone to dispute these sources. The first
thing I learned in journalism class is to lay out ads first, and
"content" later.
Anyway, not all shrinkwrap is threatened by Free Software, as someone
explained privately. A subset supposedly has the most risk:
well-documented implementations of published APIs/standards.
So Joel Spolsky's bugtracker flourishes despite enormous Free Software
competition. And Richard P. Gabriel writes a book on opensource
business models (which I haven't read):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1558608893/002-0564385-4460852
Franz's business is growing despite Free Software. Lispworks also seems
fine. It is perfectly sensible to attribute much of Lisp's noticeable
uptake to Free Software, and books available gratis.
Free Software shares many patterns in common with any disruptive tech.
1) Service occupations
Some critics fear that software will become a service industry due to
Free Software. This is very similar to Martin Luther King's warnings of
"the moloch of automation" shifting people to "proliferating service
occupations with low wage scales and longer hours".
High-profile economist Paul Krugman cheerfully explains that "cleaning
houses and providing personal care" may be the fate of the nation's
service economy, because they can't easily be automated. Scrubbing
bathtubs, in other words. He seems to consider this a good thing.
2) Wage erosion
As your Wall Street Journal article claimed: "Technology, globalization
and unfettered markets tend to erode wages at the bottom and lift wages
at the top."
Critics fear that Free Software will destabilize wages through...
whatever mechanisms.
Antidotes to Free Software's hypothetical harms exist.
Kent Pitman theorizes we might want to act as a cartel, raising prices
and fixing distribution terms. Obviously, we're no longer talking
ethics, since every cartel probably thinks it's doing something
ethical. Price-fixing's a very natural strategy.
Richard P. Gabriel released a book on how opensource businesses can
work. I haven't read it though.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1558608893
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ flourishes in bugtracking, an obviously
saturated market with free software.
Some people here work in businesses which actually produce free
software for their customers.
Government grants, and patronage, fund free software development.
Remove IP protectionism and push for government/industry-funded
software dev, as it already does with research under Darpa.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1376275/posts
Related industries went through this.
New York Times: "In the 19th century, the United States was both a
rapidly industrializing nation and -- as Charles Dickens, among others,
knew all too well -- a bold pirate of intellectual property."
http://www.iprcommission.org/graphic/Views_articles/New_York_Times.htm
Chuck D of Public Enemy: "I also look at this as a situation where the
industry had control of the technology and therefore the people were
subservient to that technology at whatever price range the people have
to pay for it."
http://www.rapstation.com/promo/lars_vs_chuckd.html
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <u8y2ctwp2.fsf@nhplace.com>
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> But as someone who has formally debated, I think debaters have clear
> incentives to mitigate unpleasant facts and pursue disruptive tactics.
> Even unconsciously, just by the rules of debate. This pressure is
> significant if people aren't careful. Citations and prep time are
> required for a decent debate; and debate is usually dishonest anyway.
[... prepared citations elided ...]
> Kent Pitman theorizes we might want to act as a cartel, raising prices
> and fixing distribution terms.
I'm not going to debate the merits of this issue; I'm on break from that.
I'm going to instead just say this statement is a GROSSLY FALSE
characterization of my belief. If you think I've made such a
statement, you find the quote that backs you up and cite it.
For what it's worth, it's my personal belief that you knew you were
characterizing unfairly when you wrote it; I base this belief on your
apparent decision to paraphrase and spin my position rather than to
simply quote me. You seem to have citations for your other points; I
think you knew you would not be able to find a quote to back your
characterization of me, and so didn't try.
But my personal belief notwithstanding, if you don't want to find
yourself among those you've classified "dishonest" by myself and
others, and probably in our killfiles besides, please do not grossly
misattribute my remarks without using words like "it seems to me" that
plainly identify that this is your personal analysis, and do not imply
a good faith quote of anything I've said nor am really materially
likely to utter.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> "Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> > But as someone who has formally debated, I think debaters have
> > clear incentives to mitigate unpleasant facts and pursue
> > disruptive tactics. Even unconsciously, just by the rules of
> > debate. This pressure is significant if people aren't careful.
> > Citations and prep time are required for a decent debate; and
> > debate is usually dishonest anyway.
>
> [... prepared citations elided ...]
>
> > Kent Pitman theorizes we might want to act as a cartel, raising
> > prices and fixing distribution terms.
>
> I'm not going to debate the merits of this issue; I'm on break from
> that. I'm going to instead just say this statement is a GROSSLY
> FALSE characterization of my belief. If you think I've made such a
> statement, you find the quote that backs you up and cite it.
>
> For what it's worth, it's my personal belief that you knew you were
> characterizing unfairly when you wrote it; I base this belief on
> your apparent decision to paraphrase and spin my position rather
> than to simply quote me. You seem to have citations for your other
> points; I think you knew you would not be able to find a quote to
> back your characterization of me, and so didn't try.
>
> But my personal belief notwithstanding, if you don't want to find
> yourself among those you've classified "dishonest" by myself and
> others, and probably in our killfiles besides, please do not
> grossly misattribute my remarks without using words like "it seems
> to me" that plainly identify that this is your personal analysis,
> and do not imply a good faith quote of anything I've said nor am
> really materially likely to utter.
Before I begin refuting your point in lurid detail, I honestly thank
you for pointing out that I too can possibly fall prey to the debate
style I just described. ;) I doubt I did here; but when around people I
know are out to debate, it's entirely possible I instinctively lapse
into it.
On this threat of killfiling: If I make you unhappy, then I want you to
killfile if it helps your mental health! But someone claiming here
"You're like a dangerous commie dictator!" is worse than what you think
I said, and is best taken with humor.
Lisp's mental "IQ boost" does not apply all-around, just only to
software issues. So I expect people here to behave like in every other
forum on this non-software subject: some may agree, disagree, or try
spooking you with their killfiles. ;) Life goes on. You should read
Paul Graham's http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
> For what it's worth, it's my personal belief that you knew you were
> characterizing unfairly when you wrote it; I base this belief on your
> apparent decision to paraphrase and spin my position rather than to
> simply quote me. You seem to have citations for your other points; I
> think you knew you would not be able to find a quote to back your
> characterization of me, and so didn't try.
Entirely false; I didn't cite any Lisp or forum topic that readers may
be expected to be familiar with. So I didn't cite that Franz grows,
Lispworks seems fine, some Lisp users sustainably make money on Free
Software, etc. Some are even inferences I can't conveniently cite here.
So I expect you to acknowledge this falsehood of yours in a followup
post, once you verify it. It's not a big thing, but you've got my feet
to the fire for similar reasons.
(And without claiming that you used preceders like, "You seem" and "I
think," which trivially make things into true statements. "You seem to
beat your wife, Tayssir." I recall the documentary Outfoxed has someone
from FAIR who explains that journalists increasingly use similar terms,
like "Some say." I'm not predicting that you're going to, just that I'm
understandably paranoid that people may justify their words this way.)
- - - -
Now for my words, where I'll try engaging the step-by-step software
centers of the brain:
0) MY WORDS: "Kent Pitman theorizes we might want to act as a cartel,
raising prices and fixing distribution terms."
(Incidentally, you elided where I called cartels a "very natural
strategy," and explained that "we're no longer talking ethics". I
explicitly made no value nor ethical judgement. Just rattled it off
within a laundry-list of ideas. Elsewhere on this thread, I even
sympathetically discussed the merits of democratic price-fixing!)
DEF-1) DEFINITION: cartel.
http://www.answers.com/cartel&r=67
"national or international organization of manufacturers or traders
allied by agreement to fix prices, limit supply, divide markets, or to
fix quotas for sales, manufacture, or division of profits among the
member firms."
For humor's sake, let's note Adam Smith's maxim: "People of the same
trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the
conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some
contrivance to raise prices."
DEF-2) DEFINITION: manufacturer.
http://www.answers.com/manufacturer&r=67
"A person, an enterprise, or an entity that manufactures something."
DEF-3) DEFINITION: price-fixing.
Nagel & Holden: _The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing_, 3rd ed.
"There are two types of price fixing: horizontal and vertical. In the
former, competitors agree on the prices they will charge or key terms
of sale affecting price."
DEF-4) DEFINITION: price dumping
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping
"the act of selling a product at a loss now in order to drive
competitors out of business, with the goal of raising prices when they
do in order to recoup the investment."
Involves setting price below some given level.
STA-1) STATEMENT: you claim free software is structurally similar to
"price dumping".
You point out the two are structurally similar, except that free
software is worse in its dissimiliarities:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/ddf515fbc2a2be9b?hl=en
STA-2) STATEMENT: you theorize about people stopping their production
of Free Software in order to avoid low pricing issues.
In STA-1)'s referenced post, you claimed that "'Dumping' by a
commercial company is paid for, too, but it is not considered proper
'competition'. It unfairly manipulates the market." Since you claim
that Free Software is structurally similar (but worse), you consider
Free Software not to be proper 'competition.'
In:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/3c8ceba3ab96cd86?hl=en
you theorize that it's "within the realm of possibility that a change
of law could be in order". Because you "fear that free software will
take over" and "keep worrying prices will be driven to zero." This is a
stronger condition than theorizing that people voluntarily stop
manufacturing free software, since it becomes an "involuntary" legal
matter.
In that post, you also say free software is significantly ubiquitous
that it seems to threaten certain business models, so people have
already "started," which is a precondition for "stopping" the
production.
Also you argued:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/e6f3defec8ef0803?hl=en
* "When someone asks something free of you, ask a reasonable price."
* "When someone offers you something for free, offer to pay them for
the value you get. Tell them to charge people rather than give away
value."
STA-3) STATEMENT: you theorize about price-fixing.
For reference, DEF-3) was, "In [horizontal price-fixing], competitors
agree on the prices they will charge or key terms of sale affecting
price.
* "Agree" is from STA-2), where you describe the idea that people may
voluntarily "agree" to stop writing free software. You even discuss
"involuntary" adherence in STA-2) through legal means.
* "Competitors" was described in STA-1)'s referenced post where you
stated that price-dumpers are "competitors". Therefore by STA-1), those
releasing free software are also competitors. Who by STA-2) you
describe would stop manufacturing free software.
* "The prices they will charge" is from STA-1), where you point out
that free software is structurally similar to price dumping (except for
being worse in all its dissimilarities). Therefore, one problem of free
software is its pricing, which by STA-2) you theorize may be solved by
stopping manufacturing free software.
* "Key terms of sale affecting price."
Free Software license terms explicitly allow low-cost redistribution.
These are "terms of sale affecting price," as we explained in the above
subpoint of "Prices they will charge". You theorize this may be solved
by STA-2) through stopping manufacturing free software.
Thus, you are discussing price-fixing because you meet definition
DEF-3)'s standard of "COMPETITORS AGREE on THE PRICES THEY WILL CHARGE
or KEY TERMS OF SALE AFFECTING PRICE.
STA-5) STATEMENT: you are theorizing about a cartel.
To keep this short, we'll simply demonstrate a sufficient subset of
DEF-1):
"national or international organization of manufacturers or traders
allied by agreement to fix prices"
(I'm sure you also meet more clauses within DEF-1, but this is
sufficient.)
* "Manufacturers or traders" -- 'manufacturer' is defined in DEF-2):
any person/enterprise/entity manufacturing software.
* "National or international" -- free software manufacturers span the
globe, who affect your theory in STA-2).
* "Agreement" is from STA-3)'s subpoint on "agree."
* "Fix prices" is from STA-3).
* "Organization" - The communication signals which enable people to
stop producing free software, as in STA-2), which enables the ability
to engage in price-fixing in STA-3) for mutual benefit.
Therefore, you meet the standard of discussing a cartel: "NATIONAL OR
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION of MANUFACTURERS OR TRADERS allied by
AGREEMENT to FIX PRICES."
END-1) Construct 0).
For reference, 0) was, "Kent Pitman theorizes we might want to act as a
cartel, raising prices and fixing distribution terms."
* "Raising prices" is from DEF-4), where we infer that free software,
which is structurally similar to price-dumping from STA-1), sets prices
below a certain level. Since Free Software exists in the status quo,
stopping the manufacture of Free Software from STA-2) involves a
raising of prices above that level.
* "Kent Pitman" is the author of STA-1) and STA-2)'s posts.
* "Theorizes" is from STA-2), STA-3), STA-4) and STA-5).
* "Fixing distribution terms" is STA-4)'s subpoint of modifying "key
terms of sale affecting price" by stopping manufacture of free
software.
* "Cartel" is from STA-5).
* "Want" is the voluntary choice from STA-2) in stopping manufacture of
free software.
* "We" are Kent Pitman's audience, who manufacture software as
described in DEF-2), and may agree to stop manufacture of free software
by STA-2).
* "Might" is from STA-2), where you discuss "realm of possibility" of
stopping the manufacture of free software.
Ergo, 0): "KENT PITMAN THEORIZES WE MIGHT WANT to act as a CARTEL,
RAISING PRICES and FIXING DISTRIBUTION TERMS."
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> * "Theorizes" is from STA-2), STA-3), STA-4) and STA-5).
> * "Fixing distribution terms" is STA-4)'s subpoint of modifying "key
> terms of sale affecting price" by stopping manufacture of free
> software.
Excuse me, all references to STA-4) should really be STA-3). I elided
STA-4).
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Free software vs. commercial software Was: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ufywi22u9.fsf@nhplace.com>
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> Ergo, 0): "KENT PITMAN THEORIZES WE MIGHT WANT to act as a CARTEL,
> RAISING PRICES and FIXING DISTRIBUTION TERMS."
No. He doesn't.
Some of the things you point to that led you to this look incorrect, so
maybe that's your problem. I don't plan to detail them. Your refusal to
simply accept my claim that this is not my view is enough to render me
disinterested in any kind of discussion with you.
Please just desist in improperly making statements about my beliefs,
ESPECIALLY when, as here, I have explicitly said that your summary does
not match my belief.
- - - - - -
The remainder of this message is directed not to Tayssir but to anyone
else with the stomach to still be reading:
In general, the practice of substituting one word for another in ordinary
English is highly suspect linguistically and must be done with EXTREME care
because there are many ways it can fail. To assert that having done so
admits no risk of misunderstanding is to neglect the ordinary use of English.
I cite Frege on the matter of "Sense and Reference" as to why this
kind of rewriting is likely to lose. There's a very lucid and
readable presentation of the matter that I ran across just now when
Googling around:
http://www.answers.com/topic/sense-and-reference
Lispers might enjoy reading about Frege not just because it explains
the nature of the logical fallacies that have led to this point in the
discussion, but also because it relates to the philosophical
underpinnings of some aspects of Lisp.
Frege's original text (well, the original is in German, but I've seen
a translation in English) is thick and a bit tedious to slog through,
probably because when he wrote about a century too early and didn't
have access to a read-eval-print loop, so he had to rely on natural
language, and he kept repeating himself for fear you wouldn't
understand... Fortunately, the web page above summarizes his
conclusions nicely before it refers through to the original works. It
also offers some useful cross-references to critics of Frege (such as
Bertrand Russell). I personally tend to agree with the article that
Russell was missing some of what Frege was offering, and didn't do a
good job of showing how to explain off some of Frege's examples using
denotation only.
Frege really wanted to be writing about functions, macros, special forms,
quotation, and the like. He just didn't know it. ... or so I allege.
I'd hate to put words in his mouth when he can't defend himself, so I'll
just say it's my opinion that he'd have had quite a bit of fun with Lisp.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> "Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> No. He doesn't.
>
> Some of the things you point to that led you to this look incorrect,
> so maybe that's your problem. I don't plan to detail them. Your
> refusal to simply accept my claim that this is not my view is
> enough to render me disinterested in any kind of discussion with
> you.
>
> Please just desist in improperly making statements about my
> beliefs, ESPECIALLY when, as here, I have explicitly said that
> your summary does not match my belief.
Will do. Perfectly reasonable request.
And in fact, I'll forget about the falsehood you verifiably spread
about what I cited, which you don't acknowledge but probably checked
for yourself in 10 seconds.
I wish you hadn't gone apenuts over one sentence, imputing all sorts of
nefarious motives and inventing threats, and simply asked me to
apologize for a thoughtless sentence. Which of course it was. But you
asked for a cite, and I gave you one reeeealy long one to satisfy any
possible software-minded objection about my motives. ;)
As for this Fregean thing Kent brings up, we should note that all these
logical notations come from simple shorthands. From everyday
argumentation. Which then mathematically-minded people try formalizing
as a cool hack. I wasn't laying out anything like a mathematical
"proof", merely laying out my thoughts bare, for anyone to criticize
and point out the error.
If Kent wants to think I was making a crazy uberproof, that's his
right. But I was just baring my thoughts so people can spot any
fallacies. And it was time-consuming for a busy day. But a little fun.
Incidentally, as I mentioned to someone at the last Amsterdam meeting,
there was a debating society which tried using logical tools to reduce
the role of rhetoric.
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~eallen/debate/
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Kent M Pitman wrote:
> > "Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> > No. He doesn't.
> >
> > Some of the things you point to that led you to this look
> > incorrect, so maybe that's your problem. I don't plan to detail
> > them. Your refusal to simply accept my claim that this is not my
> > view is enough to render me disinterested in any kind of
> > discussion with you.
> >
> > Please just desist in improperly making statements about my
> > beliefs, ESPECIALLY when, as here, I have explicitly said that
> > your summary does not match my belief.
>
> Will do. Perfectly reasonable request.
>
> And in fact, I'll forget about the falsehood you verifiably spread
> about what I cited, which you don't acknowledge but probably
> checked for yourself in 10 seconds.
>
> I wish you hadn't gone apenuts over one sentence, imputing all
> sorts of nefarious motives and inventing threats, and simply asked
> me to apologize for a thoughtless sentence. Which of course it was.
> But you asked for a cite, and I gave you one reeeealy long one to
> satisfy any possible software-minded objection about my motives. ;)
Hmm, actually this is not quite true. I also recall being quite
condescending, with the explicit goal of defining even the word "the",
but I had more pressing matters so I just sent what I had. I felt the
person I was responding to was quite stupid.
Do I sometimes blame computer people for being part of economics which
demonstrably helps certain segments of the society to the detriment of
others? Do I have the same anger and contempt as some Lisp users have
against people who don't read the spec but can? Do I subconsciously
perceive computer people as haughty and condescending, to the point I
am no longer seeing reality, and occasionally throw it back at them?
Anyway, I mainly mention this so people can use their little killfiles
as they wish. It is honestly not my concern whether they wish to share
nuggets of wisdom with me.
But on the slight chance I somehow caused someone emotional pain in my
confusion, that person has my deepest apology. I need to reanalyze my
outlook, and until I do so, I am not sure whether I did cause this.
Hi Kent,
I've been offline for most of the week, so this is my first
opportunity to respond.
First off, I'd like to apologise if I've managed to press some of your
buttons, or to sour your or anyone else's enjoyment of c.l.l. These
results are not my intent, though resentment is predictable. There is
usually no way to point out home truths over which people's egos rest
without occasioning resentment for it, and the greater the truth, the
greater the resentment and anger.
This is not to say that your resentment and anger were necessarily
caused by my being right. That is for you and no one else to
decide. Everyone else can make the same judgement about their own
reactions to the things I have pointed out.
If I have made any unnecessarily personal remarks, such as speculating
about whether your position simply amounts to FUD, then I apologise
for that, too.
At this stage, I think that we have both made our respective points,
and that carrying on from here will probably prove to be without
merit. So, I think we can call it a day, and raise the white flag. As
I said, we are all friends here, even though friends sometimes have
their little feuds. Suffice it to say that our value systems are
radically different.
If there is one thing that I would like readers to take away from this
discussion it is this: worrying about how and whether Free Software
might have some future detrimental effects on some types of markets or
may otherwise impinge upon some other people's perceived "turf", is
really a remarkably insane thing to be doing while our children are
being killed in Iraq, while our air and our food are being poisoned,
while ecosystems are collapsing, threatening the survival of billions,
while capitalism is mutating into a global totalitarian state with
sociopaths running the major nations, and while energy shortages, real
or manufactured, may result in global starvation and perhaps even the
collapse of civilisation itself. "Get a handle on perspective," is the
message here.
David
--
David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/
Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mice ran up the clock,
The clock struck one,
The others escaped with minor injuries.
I think the the important distinction to be made is that what you
describe as being forced is not the same as being coerced.
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <uvf61u34y.fsf@nhplace.com>
Rajappa Iyer <···@panix.com> writes:
> Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
>
> > Kent is lamenting the fact that he can no longer do the kind of
> > work that he used to be able to do.
>
> One could make the same complaint about Microsoft as it absorbs all
> interesting new utilities into the next version of Windows thereby
> depriving utility writers of a market.
In the design of Common Lisp (just to change the subject slightly), I
submitted a heap of proposals for changes to the language. I often got
responses from other committee members like "Well, if you propose this,
what about the fact that others might want X? What makes you special?"
My response came to be always the same: "I wrote my proposal up. Consider
theirs when they propose it."
This wasn't just an issue of snobbery, it had an underlying theory: That if
a problem is suffficiently problemsome, someone will report it. People can
make up strawman complaints all the want, but the thing they knew about most
of my proposals is that they were based on actual experience and actual
user need. I had taken meticulous notes when I translated Macsyma (a 100,000
line program) from Maclisp/Franz/Zetalisp with lots of conditionals to
Common Lisp and then tried to port it to several platforms.
There were various non-portabilities under CLTL and I was thinking
that if we could just make CL work portably for that one program, we'd
have made progress. All the better if someone wanted to do a similar
experiment for another program. But having some committee member make
up theorized "other people" wanting "other things" and then
complaining that my proposals seemed no more important than those of
these imagined other people seemed weird.
Back to the topic of free software, I've made certain specific
complaints and claims. If you would like to make others, you should
do so. But please don't do so in the hypothetical/conditional mode.
I'd rather you say "It bugs me personally that..." or else that you
don't say it. I'm not trying to stifle free speech here. I'm trying
simply to figure out whether you are just using a tense you didn't
mean to and you ARE complaining for yourself, and whether you're
trying to hide your complaint by making it sound distant, or whether
you're trying to be direct and failing, or whether you're just
thinking aloud about castles in the clouds. Those are all very different
things and I urge you to articulate the source and impact of your remark
more clearly.
To the extent that conversations like this are useful (and I know
people who don't think they are, or who don't think this one is, but
I've learned a lot by listening to people respond to me here, so I
personally think they are), they are most so when we are clear with
one another. I'm personally interested not just in convincing people
but in hearing why they are unconvinced, or what OTHER things bug
people that I have not noticed, etc. There's personal preference
information, philosophy, market data, business ideas and other stuff
mixed into all of this, and the more clearly we tag which is which,
the better we stay informed. That's why I probably seem ever so
slightly blunt in some cases, as when Tayssir accused me of saying
extreme things in reaction to people. I'm not really trying to be
extreme, but I am trying to be blunt and direct in hopes that people
will answer me in like form so that I can know what they really think
and not have them hedge and not have them speak hypothetically about
people they think might have other opinions. It's an imperfect way to
go, I know, because it risks offending. But it's "my way" sometimes.
Even if you don't emulate it exactly, and it probably doesn't call for
exact emulation--some people are better at being clear without being
offensive than I am--I hope you'll at least see the point of being
direct.
In response to the hypothetical, btw, I'm not making that claim. I'm
willing to compete with anyone who's in it for the money on a head to
head basis. I don't know how to compete in a market where my opponent
is not bound by restrictions of paying for what it takes to produce
something.
> Without passing judgement on
> the goodness or badness of free software (or Microsoft for that matter,)
> I am curious as to why Kent believes that he is entitled to make a
> living in a particular way.
This is not an issue of entitlement.
First, this is an issue about unilateral disarmament. I am partly remarking
to those who are disarming that they may be injuring themselves.
Second, this is an issue about the function and purpose of a
market. Markets have rules. When they operate best, those rules are
not established to make individuals win or lose. Any time you see
"me" in this, you are focusing on me winning or losing. I don't feel
an entitlement to win. However, I believe that it would be good for
"us" (all of us) if the properly functioning market were encouraging
work of the sort I'm advocating by paying it. There is a definite
less to all of us when we cannot buy alternate compilers, alternate
window systems, etc. because, gradually, there is no money in it.
I grew up in a world of "choice" in computers. I see less and less of it
all the time.
Oh, nitpickily different buzzwords and whatnot to be sure. But it's
harder and harder to do something fundamentally different because of
monopolies on one end and free software picking up the other end and
becoming a de facto monopoly because those with no money can't afford
to deviate from so large a collection of work. The lack of freedom in
its license forces a business model that is anything but freedom.
I would probably not be half as bothered with free software if it
didn't abuse the term "freedom" in the same way the US Republicans abuse
the words like "freedom", "values", and "democracy" -- as if they had
a lock on the meaning of these much more generic terms.
In article <·············@nhplace.com>,
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> wrote:
> I'm not really trying to be
> extreme, but I am trying to be blunt and direct in hopes that people
> will answer me in like form so that I can know what they really think
> and not have them hedge and not have them speak hypothetically about
> people they think might have other opinions.
Well, I can't pass up an invitation like that ;-)
> In response to the hypothetical, btw, I'm not making that claim. I'm
> willing to compete with anyone who's in it for the money on a head to
> head basis. I don't know how to compete in a market where my opponent
> is not bound by restrictions of paying for what it takes to produce
> something.
But everyone is so bound. No one can escape the laws of economics.
What you don't like, it seems to me, is competing in a market where
people pay the costs of producing something with the proceeds from some
other endeavor (or patronage) rather than the thing being produced.
> First, this is an issue about unilateral disarmament. I am partly remarking
> to those who are disarming that they may be injuring themselves.
It's disarmament only if your goal is to make money selling (not
writing) software. Not everyone who writes software shares that goal.
Not even everyone who has the goal of making money *writing* software
has the goal of making money *selling* software. Writing software and
selling software are two very different endeavors. (In general, making
things and selling things are very different, and either one tends to be
a full time job, so you typically have to choose one or the other.)
> Second, this is an issue about the function and purpose of a
> market. Markets have rules. When they operate best, those rules are
> not established to make individuals win or lose. Any time you see
> "me" in this, you are focusing on me winning or losing. I don't feel
> an entitlement to win. However, I believe that it would be good for
> "us" (all of us) if the properly functioning market were encouraging
> work of the sort I'm advocating by paying it. There is a definite
> less to all of us when we cannot buy alternate compilers, alternate
> window systems, etc. because, gradually, there is no money in it.
You make it sound as if the *reason* for the result has an impact on the
desirability of the result, as if it would be OK that we could not buy
alternate systems if they weren't available for some other reason.
Since it is not at all clear a priori that alternate systems are
desirable this might actually be what you meant. Is it? I actually
disagree with both positions, but I don't want to knock down a straw man.
> I grew up in a world of "choice" in computers. I see less and less of it
> all the time.
OK, this makes it sound like you are lamenting the passing of choice for
its own sake, and not the underlying cause per se.
Choice is not in and of itself a good thing. Consider e.g. the shape of
electrical outlets, signaling protocols on telephone land lines,
computer networking equipment, CD and DVD formats... to the extent that
there is choice in these areas it's generally considered a bad thing.
Most people would prefer, e.g. not to have to worry about carrying
electrical adapters with them when they travel internationally.
Compilers and window systems, the two areas you specifically cited where
you'd like to see more choice, are infrastructure, like the electrical
grid, or the Internet, and it is not at all clear that having more
choice is necessarily a good thing, at least not for society at large.
> Oh, nitpickily different buzzwords and whatnot to be sure. But it's
> harder and harder to do something fundamentally different because of
> monopolies on one end and free software picking up the other end and
> becoming a de facto monopoly because those with no money can't afford
> to deviate from so large a collection of work. The lack of freedom in
> its license forces a business model that is anything but freedom.
That's right. So what? Displacing infrastructure is hard. If I wanted
to start a railroad today I'd have a really tough time, and if I wanted
to start one whose tracks were a non-standard gage it would be even
harder. But if there were a compelling economic advantage to it I would
still have a good shot at succeeding.
Back in 1998 you could have used your argument to make the case that the
fact that Alta Vista was available for free made it all but impossible
to make money building a better search engine, and almost everyone
believed exactly that at the time. Everyone except two guys named Larry
and Sergey.
> I would probably not be half as bothered with free software if it
> didn't abuse the term "freedom" in the same way the US Republicans abuse
> the words like "freedom", "values", and "democracy" -- as if they had
> a lock on the meaning of these much more generic terms.
I have a hard time believing that nomenclature is really what motivates
you to engage in debates on this topic.
rg
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Rajappa Iyer <···@panix.com> writes:
>
> > Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
> >
> > > Kent is lamenting the fact that he can no longer do the kind of
> > > work that he used to be able to do.
> >
> > One could make the same complaint about Microsoft as it absorbs all
> > interesting new utilities into the next version of Windows thereby
> > depriving utility writers of a market.
>
>
> Second, this is an issue about the function and purpose of a
> market. Markets have rules. When they operate best, those rules are
> not established to make individuals win or lose. Any time you see
> "me" in this, you are focusing on me winning or losing. I don't feel
> an entitlement to win. However, I believe that it would be good for
> "us" (all of us) if the properly functioning market were encouraging
> work of the sort I'm advocating by paying it. There is a definite
> less to all of us when we cannot buy alternate compilers, alternate
> window systems, etc. because, gradually, there is no money in it.
>
> I grew up in a world of "choice" in computers. I see less and less
of it
> all the time.
>
> Oh, nitpickily different buzzwords and whatnot to be sure. But it's
> harder and harder to do something fundamentally different because of
> monopolies on one end and free software picking up the other end and
> becoming a de facto monopoly because those with no money can't afford
> to deviate from so large a collection of work. The lack of freedom
in
> its license forces a business model that is anything but freedom.
>
> I would probably not be half as bothered with free software if it
> didn't abuse the term "freedom" in the same way the US Republicans
abuse
> the words like "freedom", "values", and "democracy" -- as if they
had
> a lock on the meaning of these much more generic terms.
I think there's an underlying assumption to this discussion that free
software has in some way damaged the IT industry. Are there any
reputable studies that have tried to examine this assumption? That
significant numbers of programming jobs have been lost as a direct
consequence of the growth of free software?
For my part, I suspect that free software might have had a beneficial
effect (but I'll be the first to admit that I have no hard evidence).
After all, its not like there's only a finite set of computing
problems, and that once there's free software solutions to them, we can
all go home. My experience is, that if I find a suitable piece of free
software that solves a problem, I just move on to the next problem in
my queue. I don't have to reinvent the wheel all the time.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> To the extent that conversations like this are useful (and I know
> people who don't think they are, or who don't think this one is, but
> I've learned a lot by listening to people respond to me here, so I
> personally think they are), they are most so when we are clear with
> one another. I'm personally interested not just in convincing people
> but in hearing why they are unconvinced, or what OTHER things bug
> people that I have not noticed, etc. There's personal preference
> information, philosophy, market data, business ideas and other stuff
> mixed into all of this, and the more clearly we tag which is which,
> the better we stay informed. That's why I probably seem ever so
> slightly blunt in some cases, as when Tayssir accused me of saying
> extreme things in reaction to people. I'm not really trying to be
> extreme, but I am trying to be blunt and direct in hopes that people
> will answer me in like form so that I can know what they really think
> and not have them hedge and not have them speak hypothetically about
> people they think might have other opinions.
What people really think... Ok, then you may very well be a person who
psyches himself out. Smart people often do that. Stop when an obstacle
hits; unwilling to make mistakes.
I recently spent a few hundred bucks going to a Lisp meeting. And I
have bought whatever Lisp books there are. I don't know how people
aren't able to tap into that. Come on. It's not exactly blood from a
stone.
The idea that free software people should be 'altrustic' is laughable.
It's not even there for the user's sake. It works in the interest of
those who can participate in its construction. Obvious, isn't it? Any
system is supposed to work in the interest of those who control it. As
anyone who reads a newspaper knows, MS Windows works in the interest of
MS's shareholders.
Speaking of myths, I'm sure the oh-so-smart Lispniks would like to
debate over whether the tooth fairy's libertarian. I think it is. To
ensure more posts, I also think that Java is a modern, improved Lisp.
Oh, and I can't even begin to understand how MIT software nerds think
they have ANYTHING to do with the free market. They wouldn't know a
free market if it offshored them to India. The US government subsidized
all their stupid little geek toys: the US taxpayer paid handsomely for
risky pie-in-the-sky research. Productivity shot up, but somehow wages
stagnated/declined and we work longer hours, so it was a damn useless
investment. Lying geeks. Take it from the biggest asshole of all:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/technology/02darpa.html
"John McCarthy founded the Stanford artificial research lab in 1964,
helping to turn it into a wellspring for some of Silicon Valley's most
important companies, from Xerox Parc to Apple to Intel.
"'American leadership in computer science and in applications has
benefited more from the longer-term work,' Mr. McCarthy said, 'than
from the deliverables.'"
Kent M Pitman wrote:
>
> Oh, nitpickily different buzzwords and whatnot to be sure. But it's
> harder and harder to do something fundamentally different because of
> monopolies on one end and free software picking up the other end and
> becoming a de facto monopoly because those with no money can't afford
> to deviate from so large a collection of work. The lack of freedom in
> its license forces a business model that is anything but freedom.
>
What I would suggest is to put blinders on and not even think about the
monopolies on one side and the free software on the other. Most of the
human population does not see it, so supplying software to them is
an issue of functionality, not choosing what side to be on. Considering
this issue will tie one in mental knots. So, personally, I just try to
get it in perspective. Let the dogs fight over the bones, when one
wins it will find that it was dry and tasteless anyways, and it will
wonder how it trapped (as opposed to freeing itself) itself with all that
organization and maintenance. This is why I like Lisp now,
especially more primitive (essential) types of programming.
Right to the heart of the matter!
Wade
"You have been down there Neo, you know that road, you know exactly where it ends.
And I know that's not where you want to be." - Trinity, The Matrix
Harald Hanche-Olsen wrote:
> + Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de>:
>
> | Kent M Pitman wrote:
>
> | > I'm not going to belabor the point. I've done that many times.
> | > I just want to say that this remark above misses it.
>
> | About you having belabored that point many times: something on your
> | website, or something specific I could google for?
>
> Look for a long thread on comp.lang.lisp entitled "Learning new
> things" around mid-March 2003.
Thanks.
It's interesting that Kent cites Ayn Rand (I haven't read Atlas
shrugged, but The Fountainhead is good). I mostly agree with what
Americans would call economic conservatism (for Europeans:
liberalism), but still don't really understand his comment to my post:
"This is like saying to someone who wants to be a professional opera
singer "not to worry--there will always be advertising companies
wanting someone to belt out their stupid jingles, and there will
always be restaurants wanting to hire both the occasional live singer
or someone to record muzack for them". That's great for people who
find that fulfilling, but it misses the point. I'm not going to
belabor
the point. I've done that many times. I just want to say that this
remark above misses it."
Somewhere in that old thread he mentions that everything has to be
paid for by someone. That's exactly what I'm saying. Find
somebody who pays you if you want to be paid (I take that one for
granted). If the price is low enough and the product good,
someone will accept it. It's about money, not fulfillment.
Fulfillment is a personal thing, and for most people unrelated to
making money (unfortunately).
Anyway, there's probably no point in picking nits here. Kent has
his view, and I have mine :)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
In article <···············@individual.net>, Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> Harald Hanche-Olsen wrote:
>> + Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de>:
>>
>> | Kent M Pitman wrote:
>> | > I'm not going to belabor the point. I've done that many times.
>> | > I just want to say that this remark above misses it.
>>
>> | About you having belabored that point many times: something on your
>> | website, or something specific I could google for?
>>
>> Look for a long thread on comp.lang.lisp entitled "Learning new
>> things" around mid-March 2003.
>
> Somewhere in that old thread he mentions that everything has to be
> paid for by someone. That's exactly what I'm saying. Find somebody
> who pays you if you want to be paid (I take that one for granted).
> If the price is low enough and the product good, someone will accept
> it. It's about money, not fulfillment. Fulfillment is a personal
> thing, and for most people unrelated to making money
> (unfortunately).
I think part of Kent's point comes in the realm of writing commercial
software. I would rather write a product once and sell it many times
than sell my time. Open Source/Free/What Have You software makes that
harder by driving down the acceptable cost of commercial products.
I don't really consider Kent's opera analogy all that apt, in this
case. I think perhaps a more apt analogy (and it's only an analogy)
would be to say to Stephen King, "The Internet has made commercial
books obsolete; too many people put up their content for free.
However, some people will pay you to come to their houses and recite
your work." Sure, maybe he could make a living at it, but I bet he'd
rather write a book once and sell it many times, in part because, if
he stops doing public performances, his income stream stops; if he
stops writing books, his income stream will continue.
[ Insert the name of any author for Stephen King, even an unsuccessful
one. The identity of the author has no bearing on the analogy. The
analogy speaks to cash flow and the relative ease of maintaining it
given two different distribution media. ]
To belabor the point: I have a limited amount of time. If I sell my
hours for dollars, my dollars are fundamentally limited. If I invest
my hours in creating a product, and then sell the product, my dollars
are much less fundamentally limited. In both cases my skill and other
factors limit my dollars, but only in one case do I have to keep
exhibiting my skill day after day after day after day after day.
Just my $0.02.
-- Larry
Larry Clapp <·····@theclapp.org> schrieb:
> I would rather write a product once and sell it many times than sell
> my time.
Some people would rather steal a lot of money than earn it, but that
desire is trumped by other people's right to keep money they've earned.
Not that I'm saying they're morally equivalent, but just that free
software advocates think something analogous like: your *desire* to sell
the software many times is trumped by other people's *right* to use,
modify, and share changes to software they've bought. (That this makes
it practically impossible to extract payment from everyone who uses the
software is an unavoidable consequence.) So you're arguing the wrong
point.
In article <··························@sixfingeredman.net>, Adrian Kubala wrote:
> Larry Clapp <·····@theclapp.org> schrieb:
>> I would rather write a product once and sell it many times than
>> sell my time.
>
> Some people would rather steal a lot of money than earn it, but that
> desire is trumped by other people's right to keep money they've
> earned. Not that I'm saying they're morally equivalent
:) Glad to hear it.
> but just that free software advocates think something analogous
> like: your *desire* to sell the software many times is trumped by
> other people's *right* to use, modify, and share changes to software
> they've bought. (That this makes it practically impossible to
> extract payment from everyone who uses the software is an
> unavoidable consequence.) So you're arguing the wrong point.
We (I and they) disagree over their alleged "rights".
-- Larry
On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 23:27:34 -0500, Adrian Kubala wrote:
> Larry Clapp <·····@theclapp.org> schrieb:
>> I would rather write a product once and sell it many times than sell
>> my time.
> Some people would rather steal a lot of money than earn it, but that
> desire is trumped by other people's right to keep money they've earned.
Really?? Where are you that people have that right? Almost everywhere
I know of, people's right to keep the money they've earned is trumped by
other people's preference for stealing it instead -- it's called taxation.
--
Give a man a match and he'll be warm for a minute, but set him on fire
and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
(setq reply-to
(concatenate 'string "Paul Foley " "<mycroft" '(··@) "actrix.gen.nz>"))
Paul Foley <·······@actrix.gen.nz> (http://public.xdi.org/=pf) writes:
> On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 23:27:34 -0500, Adrian Kubala wrote:
>
>> Larry Clapp <·····@theclapp.org> schrieb:
>>> I would rather write a product once and sell it many times than sell
>>> my time.
>
>> Some people would rather steal a lot of money than earn it, but that
>> desire is trumped by other people's right to keep money they've earned.
>
> Really?? Where are you that people have that right? Almost everywhere
> I know of, people's right to keep the money they've earned is trumped by
> other people's preference for stealing it instead -- it's called taxation.
And inflation, institutionalized with the breaking of the gold standard,
which allows to rob you your money while it's still in your pocket.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
In deep sleep hear sound,
Cat vomit hairball somewhere.
Will find in morning.
From: Russell McManus
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <87mzrhbojb.fsf@cl-user.org>
Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
> And inflation, institutionalized with the breaking of the gold
> standard, which allows to rob you your money while it's still in
> your pocket.
I guess you should buy gold then with your savings.
-russ
Russell McManus <···············@yahoo.com> writes:
> Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
>
>> And inflation, institutionalized with the breaking of the gold
>> standard, which allows to rob you your money while it's still in
>> your pocket.
>
> I guess you should buy gold then with your savings.
If I had any. Fact is that a car, a costume or ham cost about the
same in gold in Rome, in XVI century or in XXI century.
Ok, a XXI century car goes faster, well COULD go faster if the state
would not intervene once again, and the ham has more pesticids, but
that's the only difference.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we. -- Georges W. Bush
From: Sam Steingold
Subject: gold standard [Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions]
Date:
Message-ID: <u7jilscm7.fsf_-_@gnu.org>
> * Pascal Bourguignon <···@vasbezngvzntb.pbz> [2005-04-29 17:51:29 +0200]:
>
> Fact is that a car, a costume or ham cost about the same in gold in
> Rome, in XVI century or in XXI century.
I doubt this.
While the gold standard was in place, major inflations came with
discoveries of new sources of gold
(America in 16th century, Alaska in late 19th century)
Could you please justify your statement?
I am not saying that you are wrong, I just find your statement surprising.
E.g., 1 aureus = 8 grams of gold ~ $100.
i.e., 1 denarius = $4.
<http://www.dl.ket.org/latin2/mores/currency/currency3.htm>:
half-liter of Falernian (best quality) wine = 30 denarii = $120 -- OK
half-liter of beer = 4 denarii = $16 -- far too much
4 pounds of dessert grapes = 4 denarii = $16 -- OK
1 army measure of meat = 100 denarii = $400 ?!
1 army measure of beans = 100 denarii
fresh olive oil, about 1 pint = 40 denarii = $160 far too much
honey, best quality, about 1 pint = 40 denarii = $160 far too much
1 pound of pork = 12 denarii = $48 far too much
1 pound of beef = 8 denarii = $32 far too much
freshwater fish = 8 denarii = $32 far too much
farm worker's boots = 120 denarii = $480 far too much
shoes, senatorial = 100 denarii = $400 well...
woman's boots = 60 denarii = $240 ok
looks like the gold is much cheaper now...
--
Sam Steingold (http://www.podval.org/~sds) running w2k
<http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/> <http://www.honestreporting.com>
<http://www.camera.org> <http://www.jihadwatch.org/>
MS DOS: Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue.
On 2005-04-27 02:21:04 +0200, Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> said:
>
> I think nice small applications (like a really good newsreader for the
> Mac) would be worth $10-20 for most people. It depends how much you
> want to make on software, and how many customers you can get.
Unison maybe? $24.95 at http://www.panic.com/unison/
I'm using and liking it.
Engelke Eschner wrote:
> On 2005-04-27 02:21:04 +0200, Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> said:
>
>>
>> I think nice small applications (like a really good newsreader for the
>> Mac) would be worth $10-20 for most people. It depends how much you
>> want to make on software, and how many customers you can get.
>
>
> Unison maybe? $24.95 at http://www.panic.com/unison/
> I'm using and liking it.
>
I'll give it a try, although I don't think I want to pay $25 for a
newsreader...
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <871x8sa9nx.fsf@qrnik.zagroda>
Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
> First, SBCL is itself harming the industry by catering to the notion
> that you don't have to pay to acquire something.
If Lisp had only non-free implementations, it would be now even more
dead than it is.
(Please don't extrapolate this to ancient times. I mean *now*,
when there are alternatives.)
--
__("< Marcin Kowalczyk
\__/ ······@knm.org.pl
^^ http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
Date:
Message-ID: <ud5scb4of.fsf@nhplace.com>
Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <······@knm.org.pl> writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com> writes:
>
> > First, SBCL is itself harming the industry by catering to the notion
> > that you don't have to pay to acquire something.
>
> If Lisp had only non-free implementations, it would be now even more
> dead than it is. [...]
If you think I dispute this, you'd be wrong.
It's not as simple as saying that they can fix the problem simply by
choosing not to do it. Consider the statement more like my saying that
"burning oil and gasoline and coal is hurting the world". It can both
be true that it is doing so and that to stop would cause awful harm
(in the current system). There can be better systems that require more
than incremental adjustment. [Known to AI as "The Hill-Climbing Problem."]
I think it's possible for the statement I made above [which I probably
qualified inadequately with context, and probably sounds stronger in the
context it ended up with than I meant it to] to be true at the same time
as others like:
If there were no free software, SBCL could be making more money for
its makers than it is now.
(I often try to, by use of additional phrases, arm my statements to be
not so easily quoted out of context, but failed in this case. I certainly
did not mean to allege that SBCL in and of itself was some force of evil,
in need of mending its evil ways. The issues are more complex than that.)
I repeat my basic claim: Free software is neither 100% good nor 100%
bad. What frustrates me is not that people allege good effects. I
know they are there. I use free software to some effect myself. It's
that they allege, explicitly or implicitly, that there no bad effects.
They say it is a de facto "good thing" if you simply do free software,
without considering the context effect. There may be contexts where
free software is good, but there are those where it's not. I advocate
a "look before you leap, learn to watch for ill after-effects,
apologize even if you can't undo the ill effects, and try to be better
in the future" plan. As long as people believe their action cannot
bring harm, they are not even looking for ill effects.
Even the free market itself is only a tool, and needs regulation. It's
often cited as the very definition of good, but it sometimes doesn't
do good at the margin, and requires tuning to do better. Those who
say that it somehow knows better than we do are, I believe, just wrong.
That said, those who say the free market must be totally controlled
to assure no bad outcomes are also wrong. But this is a case of a
systematically observable set of ill effects even in the presence of
other systematically good effects. Yet there seems to be no dialog about
the bad effects because people are in such a euphoria (and at the same
time such a defensive mode) about the good effects that they don't want
to even be told there might be otherwise.