John - wrote:
> Despite the political prejudices of a great many participants, Debian
> may be the world's best instance of socialism in practice. If
> socialists were smart, they'd learn something from this. Ditto
> capitalists. Double ditto libertarian hardliners.
And just what have you learned from Debian and it's socialism? Here's
what I learned.
Socialism works when there is no real value to the items being exchanged.
Because we can duplicate the code/programs at an insanely low price (it isn't
free, electricity and net bandwidth/blank CDs cost) we can hand it out to any
and all takers with no perceptable loss to us.
However, in the real world where if I hand you my shirt I have none on my
back socialism has yet to succeed. It's called 0-sum. However in a
capitalist world where barter and trade reign each trade is, by definition,
not 0-sum. The only time 0-sum works is when what you're trading is equal to
or exceedingly darn close to 0.
--
Steve C. Lamb | But who decides what they dream?
PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | And dream I do...
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