Re: IANG license translation draft

["Patrick Anderson" <ownut@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Patrick Godeau writes:
>> I've come to think that the economy of copyleft should not be managed
only by producers, but also by consumers.

Dmytri Kleiner writes:
> all that which to employ the common stock must be free to do so, that is
the very essence of a commons.
> it's production that must have it's costs accounted for, else there is
no common stock

Patrick Anderson writes:
Are you saying workers must receive more than wage?  If so, it will
require the workers refuse the consumers from accessing the physical
sources, otherwise the consumers can hire someone else that WILL work for
wage only.


> Consumers must have rights to access the common stock, however
consumption is not itself a contribution to production.
Consumption is not a contribution, but it is (should be) the only reason
for production.

>> However the most important thing is not who owns, but who decides, and
the license already states that decisions about the work belong to all
who contribute to this work.

If by 'own' you are speaking of information as though it were rivalrous
property, then you will be outperformed by those that understand this to
not be the case (those utilizing copyleft for example).


>> Also, the material work is not the creative work, and I don't see why
for example the printing press operator should have a say in the story
of the book, except if s-he is admitted in the creative project. But I
agree that this operator should have a say in the economic project.

In the material sphere it is owners and ONLY owner who control.  Many
people find this objectionable, but there is no reason to change that
relationship if we simply insure ownership 'flows' to the consumers by
treating any profit they pay as their own investment in more physical
sources; then we can leave it up to private property law and the whims of
those collective owners to decide how to treat those physical sources as
all costs will be internalized.


> The story of the book would be free for the press operator or anyone
else to employ, modify, etc, in peer production in any way they want,
and unfree for anyone to employ in capitalist production based on
private property and wage labour.
>
> "decide" only makes since in the economic context, where the
distribution of captured value must be distributed.

>> My view is that exchange value should not be captured at all, by no
one, not even by work contributors.

Then where will the difference between price and cost go?  Maybe you are
saying that price will be held at cost so profit is zero?

Holding price at cost may seem like a good idea on the surface, but as
Dmytri mentions below, profit is an inverse measure of competition, so it
would be better to allow the consumer to pay it as his own investment so
the collective ownership can grow at a rate that will slow as those
consumers become physical source owners themselves.

Competition can be perfected (though rarely perfect) by treating the
amount a consumer pays above cost as that consumer's investment in more
physical sources.  When an object consumer is also the source owner,
profit happens to be 'undefined' since the payment of such would only be
to pay himself.


>> I think that the market, which values competition and profit, is by
nature opposed to copyleft, which values cooperation and giving.

> This is also confused, competition and profit are opposites, where you
have perfect competition there is no profit, price is cost, and where
you have perfect profit you have no competition (monopoly) and price is
marginal utility.

Yes, but perfect competition would require the consumers (users) have
control, not the workers.  That control can be delivered as real
controlling shares of collective private ownership in those productive
physical sources (or toward the purchase of similar sources when there are
no shares of the current factory or farm "up for sale").


>> I think that a big problem with the economy in general is that
consumers have no control on it.  Multinational companies rule the
roost and reign over customers.  For example, Stallman was motivated to
create the GNU project because a printer manufacturer refused to give
the source code of a driver.  25 years later, free drivers may exist
for some printers, but the situation has not really improved, free
software developers are often obliged to reverse-engineer printer
protocols, and customers are forced to buy printers that break down
just after the guarantee and can't be repaired, ink cartridges more
expensive than the printer, etc.

> As I said, consumers and producers are not two separate classes,
producers are property owners are.

RMS and Eben Moglen speak of "User Freedom" - worrying only about the
consumer, never about the worker, developer, producer or owner.

For instance: "Three Minutes with Richard Stallman"
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137098-c,freeware/article.html
"'With free software, the users are in control.  Most of the time, users
want interoperability, and when the software is free, they get what they
want.  With non-free software, the developer controls the users.  The
developer permits interoperability when that suits the developer; what the
users want is beside the point.'"


>> Suppose for example that the patent system is abolished and all
pharmaceutical companies are under workers' control.  What would
happen?  Since we're in a market economy, these compagnies will
probably continue to invest in the most profitable medicine at the
expense of billions of people having unprofitable diseases, will
continue to spend twice more on advertising than on research, etc.

> Right, which is why my focus on on material property relations and not
intellectual property in isolation.

So which is it?  Shall the drug factory be owned by workers seeking profit
or by consumers seeking product?

Consumers as owners would cause price to approach cost and all labor could
be safely automated of existence as it should.

Workers as owners would continue to use artificial scarcity in ways
similar to what we already see, and profit would continue to take
precedence over product.