[Discuss] Economic value / non value of OSH work

Tue Sep 9 14:33:16 UTC 2014

Thank you Franz for this long additional and detailed shared comments.
Added to the other part of the discussion (same title without RE:), the
sideview all of this, could generate great non-conventional, but reliable,
solutions.
It might be great to keep on think of it.
Freelly,
Antoine

2014-09-07 12:51 GMT+02:00 Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at>:

>   Thank you Antoine for your response. I really had the feeling of being
> a bit ignored.
>
> "Antoine, as a contact of a free smallwindturbine project" <
> smallwindturbineproj.contactor at gmail.com>  wrote*:*
>
>
> Hi Franz and the list.
>
> I just add some comments, if relevant in this cost/price reasonning.
> Question of value, is as simple as complex.
> Question: Value of money ? or value of contribution for Humanity ? Or for
> Univers ?
>
> Obviously the term value is ambigous, but when economists want to
> determine the value, its definitely a money question.
>
> The answer to the question of what is the value in term of money (or money
> equivalence), is not so difficult.
>
> do you really think so? My point was, that the determination of value only
> works through a chaotic process of competition.
> 1. You have to keep a commodity from being consumed and ask for a monetary
> equivalent, withuot payment no consumption.
> 2. Then the process of value-determination happens, by supply and demand.
> 3. The process is always a competitive process between several
> indeopendent providers of the commodity, or else someone will fix a
> monopoly price or at the other end of the spectrum a sellout price.
> 4. Given no fluctuation  of supply and demand, value is determined by
> average social productivity and additional necessary costs (raw materials,
> rent etc.)
>
> However, answer is not unique. It depends of the deep, the width and the
> relevancy of the skill of the answerer, its goals, its believes, and the
> goals of the structure for which the answerer gives the answer. Pricing as
> always be funny to study, as strategy study is.
>
> My point is: yes, the value calculation might look funny, but in fact it
> is only an idle attempt to ask for revenue to the providers.
> The point is that as long as the mental and experimental labour is free
> (as in Free Design), nobody will care to calculate it.
> Thus the idea of a license that asks for reciprocacy, like the P2P
> License, which would force a price on the usage of Open Design - for those
> who do not give back otherwise.
> Do we want licenses that request payment? obviously not.
>
> The value in term of money, for a "tangible physical thing, but not
> software" delivered via a "free licence", could be zero, as soon as the
> entire supply chain is delivered at zero cost.
> That is the way free software are delivered: it is considered that all the
> supplay chain to get and install a free software, is at zero cost for the
> user.
> In the reality, it is not correct. The supply chain to get a free software
> delivered for free, is not at zero cost. But the user imagine it is. The
> same could be done for a "free opensource hardware".
>
> So we need to look at the ways free software works.
> It is only possible because it is subsidized from many sides, from the
> developers with their time, from the side of the users by accepting that
> things are not developed as bite-sized and fool-prone as in the commercial
> world. From the side of companies and ever corporations with money and
> employees time.
> If we had an ideal market for Free / OS Hardware, there would be research
> costs in the price of the product, but this would only work on the
> condition of voluntary agreements or forced fees for a developers fund.
> (like we have in arts).
> Voluntary agreements could arise if associations small enterprises decided
> to sponsor a common resource facility (like Open Source Ecology or OpenTech
> Forever) and complement it with an agreement on shared in-company research.
> Enterprises have always been better at cooperation than their public image
> is. Its a total myth that competitors dont talk to each other. This
> "cooperative element" could be largely expanded...
> Forced fees however could take the form of taxation, like for the
> establishment of public MakerSpaces and the granting of project dependent
> stipends. Why only roads, libraries and sports grounds?
> I understand that all the efforts to determine a "value" might be rooted
> here. If we used a clearer language, we would understand the problematique
> better. There are efforts that need to be maintained by society, and the
> best ways is to understand that knowledge must be socially maintained as a
> commons. Its all a question of negociations and renegociations, there is no
> "automatic fix" to that.
> In reality, even the "value" of any given piece of proprietory knowledge
> is a price determined by needs and powers. A constant chaos, yet very well
> working for those who run the commerical machine, supported by government
> agencies and public institutions. There is hardly a scientific calculation
> behind anything. Its a question of brute or subtle force.
>
> I see a different option to escape this situation by a new general social
> contract. Imagine that we had a world of local economies, producing locally
> for local needs but cooperating globally in terms of R&D - Then we do not
> want to exchange equivalents, rather we want to strengthen everybody. It
> would be rather a system of honor that the strong and developed throw more
> into the pot, whereas the ones that are helped out of their weakness feel
> the moral obligation to eventually "pay forward". I share this design idea
> with Marcin Jacubowski and many others.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_it_forward
>
>
> http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/FAQ#What_do_you_foresee_as_the_deeper_political_effects_of_your_work.3F
>
> What do you foresee as the deeper political effects of your work?
> "Governments as we know them become obsolete with the advent of open
> source ecology, as do all structures for collecting and redistributing
> resources with significant collateral damage.
> Distributive, collaborative production with universal access to advanced,
> appropriate tools will be so productive it will outcompete existing
> businesses. We foresee an equal playing field of competent, well-organized,
> small-scale, decentralized republics after the borders of empires dissolve
> through a natural progress of evolution. This is true whether one lives in
> the first, second, third, or fourth worlds; these distinctions likewise
> dissolve with open source ecology."
> "Our vision is a world where every community has access to an open source
> Fab Lab which can produce all the things that one currently finds at a
> Walmart cost-effectively, quickly, on-demand from local resources. We
> envision these Labs being self-replicating and multiplying like rabbits.
> This would be a giant leap for distributive economics – where resource
> constraints no longer apply. People would then have a chance to shift a
> significant portion of their energy to interests beyond mere survival. The
> end state is super-skilled workers, free of control from remote power
> centers, as people in communities regain their power to thrive without
> strings attached to their happiness. The scope of production should include
> everything from food to fuels and energy to semiconductors and metals."
>
> The question of a shift in social structures will inevitably arise with
> OSH. Value in the monetary meaning (equivalent exchange) will give place to
> value as contribution to humanity and the universe.
>
> Franz
>
>
>
>
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