Overgrazing the commons is an old problem. But the reason it
was a problem had to do with the desperation of fathers trying
to feed large families.
There is a singular exception to the long history of deforestation,
soil erosion, species extinction, and all these other effects of
greed. Chalcolithic SE Europe. The digs reveal large communal
houses, and settlement sizes that remain absolutely stable. a
village or town founded in the 7th mil BCE is still the same size
4000 years later. zero population growth.
Habits of thinking die hard, and so I expect greed to be around a
while, but there are examples of cultures which did not seem to
operate that way. From the Cucuteni on the coast of the Black Sea
to the Hvar on the Adriatic, or the Vinca in what is now Austria,
they leave us hundreds of tels from 8000-4000 BCE, but they dont
leave us any signs of city walls, no layers of burnt rubble, and
no graves of warriors with weapons. What the hell is going on?
It looks a lot like the modern western cultures do now. They set
up a vast trading empire, even had a 'Hudson Bay' type trading
post near Paris, and... because of the low birth rate, were able
to invest in the future, lots of new technologies, and-
got stinking rich.
IT was an open source system. No patent office. A Vinca platter
with writing on it, 7000 years old, their neighbors the petresti
invented the bronze found with Utzi, 7000 years ago, the Cucuteni
took the bronze and made woodworking tools and with them built
the first sailboats 6800 years ago. All over they find similar
copies of icons carved on stamps made of antler, horn, and clay.
Lables for goods being shipped, a set of 250 signs.
We see the argument being played out in music, video and software.
There is nothing they can make, that cannot be copied.{period}
Consider musicians; they can give their records away free and
make money on the concert tour. The only people who would loose
out are all those you have seen in the medie making money off the
work of musicians.
The Greek attitude is spelled out quite clearly in their literature.
By their lights, ideas were gifts of the Muses, not private
property.
Yet, do we not all admire their works? Wherefore is the claim that
only intellectual property rights enhance creativity, when the most
creative people in all history did not have them?
Well then who would pay creative people enough so that they could
live and continue to create? patrons. In the ancients it was the
rich merchants who wanted stimulating conversation in salons. In
our time, we already see endowments for artist colonies and grants
to particular individuals who show promise.
If we did not have the overhead of the billions that belong to the
likes of Mr. Wm Gates, we'd have a lot more money to grant to the
people who actually create software. Be that as it may, in his
efforts to deter piracy, he is driving people into the open source
system. AFAIK, they are trying to force all users to register with
them online... privacy invasion. They are requiring the insertion
of the master disk and the tedious typing of a registration number
when the user wants to upgrad his hardware, which I discover will
not always work if the copy is a subsidiary license to the OEM of
the system. This is protect MS from piracy and the OEM from loosing
the sale of upgrade hardware. both of which inconvenience customers.
Then too, there is the overhead of the whole IP system, the lawyers,
courts, federal and transnational regulatory agencies, and ... they
cannot keep up with the rate of technological advancement! by the
time the system makes a determination of who owns what, it aint
germaine to the business anymore.
The alternative, the open source committee system has flaws as well,
but I think that system is more adaptable, not being hampered by the
legal traditions based on Roman Law.
Law was originally established so that the warrior predators of the
other prey communities would not war among themselves. The reason
the predation was justified was that these warriors were fathers,
and had families to feed. Well, they dont anymore. Women dont have
so many kids anymore, and often dont even depend on the resources a
warrior could bring home. The excuse is gone, and warriors no longer
have the respect they once had, but the legal system based on trying
to control internal predation is still with us.
Foucault, The History of Sexuality, notes that originally kings had
the 'power of life and death'. But in fact, he notes it is power of
death all right, but he cannot create life, only permit it. Modern
governments have increasingly moved away from that, and twards the
idea of creating life in the form of social services, and vastly
reducing the powers to execute.
David Brin, author of The Postman, noted that when the buffalo were
plentiful on the great plains, the former enemy tribes who had
massecred each other during hard times, were having a barbie on
the Little Big Horn when Custer showed up trying to crash the party.
The Chalcolithic were the beginnings of agriculture, and a quantum
leap in the available resource base. Because they kept populations
stable, they never went thru the cycles of boom and bust, but had
good times like the Indians had for a brief time, and our culture is
now enjoying. Greed is a problem when there is scarcity. IP rights
are designed to cope with that, but now open source has already
created an abundance, and as soon as people realize that, the whole
IP thing will crawl back into it's hole.
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