RE: What about changing the rules?

["Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ray,

<YourComment>
 The question that always comes to my mind is, if collectives are so
efficient (no people siphoning money off the top), and offer so many
benefits to the workers, and since software development takes almost
no capital cost (no capitalist needs to be present to buy the tools or
factory), why aren't they any successful mega-size-collectives out there?
</YourComment>

<Reply>
At the beginning of the century a man asked. "We can travel to the other
continent in one week and you tell me taht we could travel to the other
continent in only some hours. If technology is so successful, why can't we
do that today (with the purpose to tell the other guy that this couldn't be
done)". Answer from the other guy: "Simple, we have found a way to do it
yet!". Today, you can, go to the other continent in only a couple hours. If
you don't try you don't know. I still remember 22 years ago as a young
researcher, someone looking at my Dorado machine (A xerox machine) and
saying "It doesn't do more than a teletype terminal". He was right but today
I use a GUI type machine and a mouse. The difference? we simply tried
something different :-)
</Reply>

<YourComment>
  All transaction costs and barriers have fell. Communications costs
are near nill. Money flows with ease. The equipment needed to develop
costs $500 at your local PC store. All of the possible things that
could stand in the way of a large software collective are at historic
lows. Hell, you could have 50,000 Indian programmers in your
collective working from India.  I guess we will see if this can pan
out. IMHO, human nature is the road block. Programmers don't need
anarcho-communism to get freedom. It just seems silly to me, that so
many geeks out there are pulling down $80,000/year, becoming
millionaires overnight, or living an expensive but bohemnian lifestyle
doing consulting, for anyone to be worried about being a downtrodden
member of the proletariat.  Maybe the economy is different in the UK,
but in the US, if you live in New York, California, or the DC area,
you can make twice the national median wage by just doing HTML
whacking.


 I'm not a cynic as someone else suggested. Cynicism is the last
refuge of an idealist. I'm a healthy skeptic, and when someone
proposes a grand scheme of changing the very nature of the way things
are done today, you have to be just a little skeptical and critical.
I wish him well. If he fails, he won't lose much except opportunity
cost, since it is trivial to set up a open-source collective on the
net.
</YourComment>

<Reply>
So let's close on this Ray and wish us good luck as we wish you all the
success you deserve. Yes sometime the world change because some fools think
it can :-)
</Reply>

Regards
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.netfolder.com




















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