🚀 go-pugleaf

|> In article <1991Jun18.042950.4473@netcom.COM> jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter) writes:
|>    ... I've received nothing but praise (usually
|>    stated quite angrily) via e-mail for the GNU family. I find this,
|>    by the way, to be totally bizarre, since it seemingly flies in
|>    the face of 6,000 years of free-market economic theory. Why something
|>    free would be quite bug free and would have great support in contrast
|>    to something that costs money is completely beyond me...

6,000 years?  Come now.  Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations" in
1776, and this was really the first time anyone set down the principles
of free market economic theory in written form.  These principles
were not practiced until about that time; before that the notion was
that the king owned everything, therefore the economy was, to a great
extent, run by and for the state.  How about "200 years of free-market
economic theory"?

The most ideologically pure free-market theoreticians assume that
human beings are motivated strictly by economic concerns; interestingly,
they agree with Marx on this score.  Of course, real human beings have
many other concerns; the best hackers, writers, artists, dancers,
musicians, etc practice their art for the sheer joy of it.  For this
reason, RMS has managed to attract a highly skilled crew of volunteers
and workers living on activist wages because he's come up with a vision
that excites them.

Many of the people following up to Jim's article are attempting to
make economic arguments -- stuff about private vs public goods, incremental
cost, etc.  While many of these arguments are useful, they ignore the
fact that economic issues are just one part of what makes up the
world.

--
Joe Buck
jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu	 {uunet,ucbvax}!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck