Business, Linux, Ethics and Standards - [Was]RE: [Sussex] Yet Ano ther Windows Bug

[Geoff Teale]

Mark wrote:
-----------
> Do you have any evidence to back up this claim? Specifically, 
> do you have 
> comparisons of the average incomes (in terms of calories, 
> water content etc) of 
> third world countries PRIOR to the 19th Century?

Prior to the 15th century is perhaps more important in terms of Europes
impact on the world economy.  At this point it is hard to get specific
figures, but it is noteable that most cultures were self sustaining prior to
the imperial age and few are self sustaining afterwards - we extracted
wealth from economies and thus destroyed the foundation of their economies.
Our wealth today is still built on the fact that it is _our_ companies that
control the raw materials of several countries, or our companies that hold
oligopolies on the supply of processed goods.  Coffee and Tea manufacturers
like Nestle can dictate price to their suppliers because they buy _all_ of
the producers supply and the producer cannot afford to let their neighbour
get the sale instead of them.  Tea growers in India recently proved that
when they are organised as a group (ironically by British students) they can
actually demand whatever price they want. If this had not been done Indian
tea growers were rapidly heading towards the situation Afghan farmers are in
- the only profitable crop they could grow were Poppies from which opiates
are drawn. 

> > The value of money is linked to the value of the raw produce of a
> > country.   
> 
> ... erm, except it isn't. It's linked to the TOTAL produce of 
> a country.

Not true!  Britains wealth is built on the sustanance of an econimc position
drawn  from the harnessing of the raw materials of the UK and the British
empire.  Money does not "appear" out of nowhere - if you process goods you
pay for the raw materials - the starting point for _all_ wealth is the raw
material that this planet and the Sun provides us with.  
Where did the money to buy the raw materials come from?  You may argue that
in the long run the answer is profit, but at initation you have to have
something to sell to make money.  Money is a flexible formalisation of the
barter system and nothing more.

Britain is a hoarder of wealth - we store wealth derived from raw materials
in other countrie.  How?  We exploit this inhereted position to keep the
price we pay for raw materials  arterficially low, this artificially
inflates the value of our produce and creates wealth in our economy.  The
wealth in out economy is very directly the cause of poverty in countries
whose raw materials we exploit.  Other time high profit leads to larger
amounts of cash to spend, which means that domestic companies need to charge
more in order to keep up with the rising wealth through profit and thus we
British economy balances through inflation.  But inflation in a wealthy
state just puts more pressure on the less wealthy states.

> > The net value of any sum of currency is in proportion to the total
> > amount of that currency in circulation and the GDP and 
> balance of trading of
> > the country in question - thus there is finite value in the world.  
> 
> Finite yes, constant no.

It is not constant because production is not constant and artificial factors
(like OPEC and the banks of the world) exercise control other supply of raw
materials and the supply of cash.  BUT (and it's a big but) the value of
money is always a function on the GDP and the balance of trading (plus some
accumaltive value in an economy via stored wealth).

> Really? Britain produces nothing? I'm fascinated to learn 
> that... certainly it 
> flies in the face of the World Trade Organisation's 
> figures... ah, but you only 
> seem to think that raw materials count.

I do... yes there is value in processing materials into goods, and these
goods have a price in excess of their cost (the basic tennet of the
capitalist system), but the money is _still_ a token of the production of
raw materials somewhere on the planet, it doesn't just appear from nowhere!!
For any transaction where profit is made than an equal amout of money is
lost.  We in the west live on the fat of a net profit on our "share" of the
worlds resources, and thus others live with less than there "share".
 
> Britain sustains its economic position by ADDING value. 
> 
> ... The value of 500kilos of raw iron ore is low. The value 
> of an assembled 
> Jaguar is much higher. 

Tell me where the value of man spot welding for four hours in greater than
the value of a man mining iron ore for four hours.  I don't dispute that the
free market economy puts a higher value on finished goods than on raw
materials - but this idea is unsustainable without suffering.  It _is_
simple.  Everytime someone makes a profit, the same amount of money is lost
by someother person.  The great irony is that the sources of the worlds
wealth are not where people are rich - in primitive society the opposite was
true.  Nations with vast natural resources were wealthy, those without
weren't.  Now the only countries that really fit that model are
oil-producing states.

> ... The value of 100grammes of sand, and a pinch of gallium 
> is a few dollars. 
> The value of a PentiumIII processor is higher (no heckling, 
> substitue SPARC or 
> PowerPC if you will.) 
> 
> The thing that changes this value is the effort of development, and 
> engineering. British, or more recently British-trained 
> engineers are involved 
> in everything from the Hong Kong airport to village-scale 
> water purification 
> schemes in Africa.

Yes, and they're doing very well.  But engineering is an infinitesimal spec
in the British economy.  As a nation we now make most of our GDP from the
abstract processing of money itself, scraping off the cream as we go..
Moreover this still doesn't answer the question of the worth of a mans time
- why is an engineers time designing a bridge worth more than the time of a
man working to get the raw materials out of the ground?  How do we justify
this gap?  Why aren't there engineers in the African village who can build
the well themselves?

I'm not saying these are things that can be addressed - there is no feasible
plan by which all of this can be rectified (though people may campaign for
half-way houses like Third World debt relief).  Nor am I pointing the
finger, it is not something either you or I intended or created.  What I am
saying is that we have a duty to consider what we have and _why_ we have it
before we start moaning about other people wanting a piece of the pie.  So
long as you, and your family are not starving and without shelter then you
can afford to think beyond the bounds of your own self-interest and think
about people who cannot afford to do so.

-- 
GJT
Free Software, Free Society. 
http://www.fsf.org   http://www.gnu.org

You have created a powerful solution for which there are no problems.
Everyone is impressed, but duly confused.


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