On Sat, 2008-02-09 at 22:48 +0100, Matthias-Christian Ott wrote: > > You're passing a judgement on the quality of the culture based on the > > mode of production. That's what I meant by 'elitist'. > > I don't see why this is elitist. But essentially my critique is a > critique of the mode of production.
It's elitist because you're saying art produced and not given away is worth less than art given away. > > That's the fundamental economic difference between this idea and free > > software: free software essentially precludes a single business model > > from several. This gift system effectively precludes all business > > models. That's unjustifiable. > > Well, that's your opinion. If you do everything just because of money > and to get rich, we have different world views. > I didn't say that gift economies work as well as scarcity economies in > terms of making money. > I just said it's possible with a little help from the solidarity of > the people. You wont become a millionaire by accepting donations, but I > could do concerts etc. We're not arguing over whether or not it's "possible", of course gift economies are possible - they exist. And your statement that you won't become a millionaire is also patently false. RMS' example of Radiohead - who hadn't made a penny from digital art before they effectively gave away "In Rainbows" - made millions of dollars. The high-profile artists will make large amounts of money in virtually every type of economy other than a communist/planned economy. If your goal is to prevent people from getting rich, a gift economy isn't what you want. Cheers, Alex. _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
