Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: thoughtomator

Bingo.

Though I wonder.........

Can free-market communism exist?

I doubt that golden eagle will stop going around calling OSS communism, so I guess the answer is yes.


6 posted on 11/23/2005 7:41:33 PM PST by Halfmanhalfamazing (Linux, the #2 OS. Mac, the #3 OS. Apple's own numbers are hard to argue with.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies ]


To: Halfmanhalfamazing

It's not communism at all - exactly the opposite in fact. What we have now is far far closer to communist - which by definition is a centrally managed economy (in this case the manager is Microsoft rather than a government, but in practice it differs only in that Microsoft is slightly more responsive) - than any open source proposal.

Open source is a libertarian/free-market approach, not a liberal one. Microsoft is far more useful to the political left than open source would be, it provides a platform for dictating to individual users, whereas open source would give the users as many choices as a free market would give them.


8 posted on 11/23/2005 8:13:51 PM PST by thoughtomator (What'ya mean you formatted the cat!?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]

To: Halfmanhalfamazing
Can free-market communism exist?

Communal societies can exist and function provided that the productive members can know who deserves to share in the benefits of their production and can ensure that the benefits go to those people.

In small communal societies, people can know who's productive and who's lazy without having to explicitly keep records. In larger societies, this becomes impractical.

The real value of money is that it provides a means by which productive members of society can communicate with other members of society about who else is productive and is worthy of sharing in the benefits of production.

BTW, software is very different from most other commodities, in that someone who freeloads off other people's development efforts does not reduce their ability to enjoy them. Indeed, even the freeloader may sometimes offer benefits if he ends up letting people know about bugs he finds that might otherwise have gone undiagnosed.

11 posted on 11/23/2005 8:55:06 PM PST by supercat (Sony delinda est.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson