[Sussex] Long live the banana republic!

[Angelo Servini]

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Steve Dobson" <SDobson at manh.com>
>To: <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
>Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 9:10 AM
>Subject: RE: [Sussex] Re: Kylix and now PHP!
>> The economies of scale that a super-sized businesses can make is
>> only good for themselves and their shareholders.  For the society
>> at large lots of small businesses is better.  They employ more
>> people, pay more tax and generally contribute more back.  At least
>> that what I've been told by an economist.
>
>Can I make a subtle distinction...
>
>AIUI, it's not that "lots of small businesses is better", but "lots of
>_competing_ businesses is better".
>
>Now, inevitably, if you have lots of businesses in a market 
>space, then they
>are going to be smaller than if that market space were a 
>monopoly. However,
>the logic is that competition drives innovation and efficiency 
>(by rewarding
>those who become more competitive and innovative), and thus is able to
>expand the size of the market.
>
>Example of market expansion - Sinclair Research in the early 
>1980s. Small
>company, brought out a lightweight product (the ZX80) in a 
>market where the
>IBMs were not efficient enough to compete. I'd be willing to 
>claim that the
>ZX80 didn't take ANY market share from IBM, but did expand the 
>market for
>computers down into a new space.
>
>However, balanced against this, you have the argument that 
>"lots of small
>businesses employing more people to do the same thing" is bad 
>if it means
>inefficiency. An example here might be the farming industry. 
>While having
>lots of smallholders with a couple of acres each producing 
>food might be
>good inasmuch as it employed more people, it wouldn't actually 
>produce any
>MORE food than small modern farms of 50-100 acres. When you have high
>unemployment, you might see a benefit in more people working 
>to produce the
>same, but when you have low unemployment, you want these people OFF the
>land, into areas where they can add something else to society.
>
>While capitalism has its problems, it's hard to argue that it 
>has proved a
>very effective method of structuring society to promote efficiency and
>innovation.
>
>The next 50 years are going to be interesting however... we're 
>seeing the
>formation of communties where the medium of exchange is NOT 
>money. Instead
>it's knowledge. I refer, of course, to the OpenSource community. The
>motivation to develop OpenSource is not usually financial. 
>Instead it's that
>by giving something to the community, you will get something 
>in return -
>software, peer support, assistance, etc. It's, at the moment, 
>hard to tax
>this... which will increasingly leave governments floundering 
>as a higher
>and higher proportion of "effort" (previously taxable) goes 
>into OpenSource,
>and you can't tax gifted time!
>
>Regards,
>
>Mark
>
Good Morning All

This is interesting stuff.  Many years ago as a teen I was enamoured of Karl
Marx and Socialism and some of the fine ideas presented.  Namely the people
themselves being in charge.  However, because of good ol' human nature, the
whole system was mortally flawed and could never work when driven by
governmental direction (not to mention all the blood letting involved).
Instead of corporate fat cats, you get stalinist fat cats duking it out for
ascendancy.

But what if we were to adopt the Open-Source idea to all aspects of life? in
other words a sort of barter economy where we help each other out of
self-interest!  Open-Source works because it works within the system rather
than attempting to overthrow it.  It works because the fiscal element has
been simply by-passed.  The reason that M$ is a monopoly is that they
managed to kill off their competitors by starving them out.  You will never
be able to do that to the Open-Source community because they can never be
forced out of business by financial competition.

With, lets call it Open-Economics, Capitalism becomes not overthrown but
irrelevant.  A new method (in fact its just an old one repackaged-its just
applied on a global stage) of economy is born or may be born, will it be
better than the last, who knows, only time will tell.  I believe Open-Source
has the potential for a far greater effect on society as a whole than we
think.  The only caveat is that those who have now are not just going to
stand around and lose what they have now without a fight.  M$ and their ilk,
still command a vast amount of fiscal clout behind them and the battle will
get bloody and dirty as they lose market ground.  If you think im kidding,
or being a doom monger, just look at Corel and their attempts to screw IBM
lately.


-- 
Angelo Servini
Programmer/Analyst
Claybrook Computing Ltd
Sutherland House
Russell Way
Crawley
West Sussex.  RH10 1UH
* 01293 604955
* 01293 604099 (Fax)
* angelo.servini at claybrook.co.uk




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