🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 10 Nov 1998 15:46:37 GMT, gordon451@my-dejanews.com
<gordon451@my-dejanews.com> wrote: 
>the alternative -- public funding -- is still under trial in many parts
>of the world: to date it has been a miserable failure, not merely in the
>quality and variety of product, but in the resulting quality of life. 

The problem with public funding is that it separates out
"responsibility."

When things are administered by 'faceless bureaucrats,' responsibility
for outcomes gets quite distant from those that are paying the bills. 

It is facile (in both the French and English senses) for an individual
looking at what they spend money on to miss the difference between
public spending and an individual's private spending. 

When you directly spend $20 on something, you see the results, and
responsibility is quite directly assessed.  If you choose well, you are
immediately rewarded by having something nice; if you choose poorly, you
are immediately assessed the penalty of receiving something worthless. 

But as soon as it heads towards the public realm, life gets a little
more complicated.  It is necessary for someone else to administer the
spending.  If you know the administrator personally, you may have reason
to know to trust their choices.  (Or perhaps to be highly suspicious!)

As the separation increases, you start to need "administrative
policies," (hopefully) objective rules to indicate what can and cannot
be done with the public resources.

As the size of the public organization grows, the sorts of odd things
that need to be deemed reasonable grows, and the number of rules also
needs to grow.  Which then feeds the consuming circle as an increase in
the number of rules means a need for more administrative staff that
monitor compliance with the rules.  And then you need an Inspector
General, and a watchdog group to watch the Inspector, and then, and
then...  [Now watch the poor taxpayer's head explode!]

Note that at no point in this process of "growth of bureaucracy" is it
necessary for there to be corruption, ill-will, or any explicit desire
for inefficiency or waste.  Those factors can make things worse, but are
not necessary preconditions for "government inefficiency."

I think that the Internet-based development of Linux allows us an
opportunity to elude this issue somewhat.

In a government, it is almost always difficult/impossible to determine
who is responsible for things that are of value. 

In contrast, it is not usually too difficult to figure out who is
responsible for the enhancements to Linux and other free software that
we find useful.  (CVS logs can be quite useful in this regard.)

In my "Linux and Decentralized Development" essay, I suggested the
thought that it would be of some value to "Send ... some ...
significant developer a gift."  (Linus was the prime person dropped into
the "fill-in-the-blanks.")

(I once sent a cheque in his direction; never cashed.  Possibly my
"Transmeta address" was wrong, or something of the sort.)

One idea that is running that is somewhat similar to this is the <Ulink
URL= "http://visar.csustan.edu"> Free Software Bazaar. </Ulink> It
publicizes software projects that people have offered money to see done.
That is an interesting approach to encouraging new development of
things; if participation substantially increased, that could result in
the commissioning of new projects. 

An orthogonal view could be to have a "Free Software Maintenance
Bazaar." (Just in case this idea is worth preserving, I've put most of
this discussion into my work copy of the web page
<http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsffairshare.html>; it may take a few days
for the updates to hit the web...)

It would collect together a list of people that have been working on
systems that we know to be useful.  (Name whatever you like.)

People could contribute money to the FSMB, directing it to the
developers of their choice. 

Seeing as how there are commonly CVS archives that can be searched, the
contributors can themselves take whatever pains they like to determine
which developers they consider most "deserving."

If the FSMB web site were to publish how much (in aggregate) was
contributed to each developer, this allows people to, to some extent,
self-optimize their contributions.  Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, RMS, and
Donald Becker quickly come to mind as "celebrities" that would likely
have somewhat elevated amounts contributed to them.  If Linus gets $1M,
and nobody else gets *anything,* this obviously doesn't encourage other
developers to participate.  I am sure that people would quickly come to
see it as more valuable to spread their contributions to a variety of
individuals working on various projects. 

Heading back to the beginning of the post, this approach allows
individuals to retain direct responsibility for the allocation of their
funding.

Admittedly, it also admits the possibility of newer and greater flame
wars on Slashdot over whether [so-and-so] is deserving of their high/low
funding levels.  And there are sure to be possibilities for subversion;
corruption is pretty much a given in the realm of human politics... 

It nevertheless seems to me to be interesting as an approach to economic
allocations that wouldn't be possible without a communications medium
like the Web.

[Further detail: Note that this does not indicate a way of directing
contributions to a *project* as such.  Directing contributions to a
*project* immediately introduces an indirection of responsibility, which
this whole approach is trying to avoid. 

One may work around this, albeit with giving up on the "direct
responsibility" advantage; suppose I came out with the claim that I'll
be starting the "GNU Ledger" project, and that I'll need to hire 3
developers to help out, people would be free to direct a pile money to
*me* to spend on that project, assuming that they trust me to produce
the results and release under a suitable license...  I would argue that
this is an unwise use of the scheme, but the approach is plausible...]
-- 
Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused his dentist's novocaine
during root canal work? He wanted to transcend dental medication.
cbbrowne@hex.net- <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>