Law in the Internet Society

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PoliticalEconomyTalk 14 - 24 Sep 2015 - Main.LizzieOShea
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META TOPICPARENT name="PoliticalEconomy"
When we talked today about political economy, I started thinking - I must confess, as I am prone to do - what would Marx make of this?
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 At some level I still do not see that with the free software movement. I do not see how dropping more informational material on people creates fundamental change on its own. The most well-educated climate change deniers have plenty of access to information, but they simply use that information as a means to solidify their own self-interested belief system. The most well-educated CEO of a commercial bank also has plenty of access to information, but simply uses that information to structure his learning process around the financial goals of his organization - and no amount of education about the structure of a credit default swap will make it any more ethical or socially valuable. So long as there remains a dominant economic order that fails to marry economic activity with use value, more information will merely augment the superstructure of an unjust system.

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But Shay you talk about reducing the marginal cost of producing energy to zero as if it is just question of physics. It's not. It's political. You're falling into the exact trap that I worried about way back when I was typing in grey about techies thinking technology will solve the problem (which, fwiw, I don't think is what Eben thinks but he can speak for himself). You're right, dropping more science, physics, information onto people won't change things. What's concealed in your simple dream of a world where the 'marginal cost of producing energy is zero' is a massive revolutionary upheaval that will transform industry, politics and presumably art and culture also. So creating spaces for people to dream about these things and paths for them to put them into action is the project we all agree on, even if we are taking on different roles in signposting the way. There are no shortcuts or simple answers.

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Revision 14r14 - 24 Sep 2015 - 20:00:05 - LizzieOShea
Revision 13r13 - 24 Sep 2015 - 18:34:42 - ShayBanerjee
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