[Sussex] Long live the banana republic!

[Steve Williams]

Sorry, I don't agree with this nonsense about Socialism and Communism.
They don't work and that't that. I suppose, theoretically speaking, that
they might in a society were altruism is the norm, but in the real,
self-interested world, forget it.

Any idea that "Open Economics" is new is false. The reason why Open
Source is gaining ground over commercial software is that it offers much
better value than the commercial stuff. True, it has yet to gain
widespread acceptance on the desktop but efforts made by developers of
KDE, Gnome and various linux distribution companies are changing this.

In effect, OS is providing exceptional competition in some areas of IT
such as servers, and will eventually do so on the desktop. My guess is
that the SuSE/Redhat 10 iteration will be the one that makes serious
inroads into M$'s desktop monopoly.

All this is entirely in keeping with market economics. Remember the old
adage - something is only worth what somone is willing to pay for it. If
you can download a decent server OS for free, why the hell tolerate M$'s
extortionate licencing costs.

The OS market economy model makes the low-cost airlines' model look
positively expensive.

Of course other factors come into play such as support and training
costs, but with OS take up increasing it will not be too long before OS
expertise reaches critical mass and this will assist in the general
acceptance of OS.

On the other hand, competition will force M$ into responding - Microsoft
Linux 2007 with .Net, IIS and SQL Server for linux bundled might not be
so far fetched.

Is the OS community a clean socialist system? It might be the closest to
the ideal socialist/communist model, but on the other hand it might be
another market economy where the currency is not money but kudos and
peer approval.

So what about industry fat cats? Well, I agree with you. However,
because the industry director community is very much a closed shop with
directors in one company being non-execs in others, it resembles a
communist politburo far mmore than an open market economy. Of course
there should be a system of reward based on performace for "fat cat"
directors. It is profundly offensive that directors sould receive
inflated pay rises at the time when they are making staff redundant and
the companies they direct are making losses. In addition, the system of
share options to reward executive performace is an open invitation to
fraud and not remotely in the best interests of the companies as a
whole. I would ban company directors from holding non-executive
directorships in other companies, and ensure that any share options
schemes are available to all employees.

However, shareholders do currently have a say in executive remuneration,
it's just that it is seldom exercised as most shareholders are big
institutions such as pension funds, but this may be changing as J-P
Garnier of Glaxo SmithKline found to his cost recently.



On Fri, 2003-06-06 at 11:04, Steve Dobson wrote:
> Angelo
> 
> On 06 June 2003 at 10:16 Angelo Servini wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I agree, there is nothing wrong with the ideas of socialism, but the
> best known implementation (Russian Communism) was flawed and failed.
> Note that China has a different implementation and that is not suffering
> the same.  They are allowing some of the ideas of western capitalism
> to operate their.
> 
> I think the OS community is a very clean socialist system, with ability
> being the only yard stick.  
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Does Open-Source work within the system?  Isn't it trying to 
> over throw M$ which is part of the system?  I think that OS works
> so well at the moment because the fiscal element hasn't been by-
> passed, but removed.  Most working on OS projects do so outside
> of earning a living.  Very few are paid to work on OS projects.
> 
> > The reason that M$ is a monopoly is that they managed to kill
> > off their competitors by starving them out.
> 
> Or buying them up.
> 
> >                                              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.
> 
> While the product is in the public domain I agree.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Some nice ideas, but some I don't like either.  Capitalism has
> show to work well under the right circumstances, so for that
> mater has Communism (Castro double the life expectancy of
> his people - what other leads can say that? [A point Geoff made;
> it's not mine]).  
> 
> I don't want to throw away the advantages of capitalism with 
> the bad, just change the rules (law) so that the excesses are 
> held in check.  Governments should not dictate how society members
> (corporate or people) are to act but just set the limits on their
> actions.
> 
> I think this new law giving stockholders a vote on the directors
> pay packages is a good example of what I like to see.  I is now 
> the members of society that can stop the Fat-cat's that are being
> rewarded for doing nothing.  I have no problem with a £2m bounce
> being paid to a CEO that takes at £10m company and turns it into
> a £50m company.  It's the reverse that is wrong.  True performance 
> related pay for the top brass :-)
> 
> Steve
> 
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