From: Ferren MacIntyre (Ferren.MacIntyre at domain nuigalway.ie)
Date: Thu 18 Oct 2001 - 21:55:16 IST
Qoth John McCormac:
>
>People will cooperate when it is in their best
>interests to do so but sooner or later, Human nature will prevail and
>the co-op system will tend towards capitalism. Rarely do the people who
>are struggling to survive entertain fantasies about co-ops and such.
>Co-ops only seem to occur when there is a sufficient amount of revenue
>generated by capitalism.
Granted that the origins of reciprocal altruism are shrouded in the mists
of evolution, one can argue (Kropotkin, Wilson, Axelrod) that without it we
would still be ground apes. Co-ops arise to meet needs which aren't
addressed by greed: the biggest threat to mutual insurance companies (and
functioning railroads) is the desire of capitalists to buy them out and
make a profit from them -- incidentally raising insurance and travel costs
for the original owners.
The entire GNU/Linux movement is a chaotic programming co-op. I haven't
contributed because the Mac provides everything I need in an environment
where I needn't mess with heiroglyphics, Bill Gates, or 80x86 assembly code
-- but it only does so because I have contributed 15 years of development
of Power MacForth's floating-point package. E.g.: I had to write complex
arithmetic, matrix manipulations, FFTs, SVDs, &c, for my own use: the
State paid for them through my professor's salary; why shouldn't I give
them to the Forth community?
Even Tony Blair is quoting GBS lately (probably without being aware of it):
Some functions are best run by individuals, some by greed-motivated
corporations, and some by non-profit bodies. The great trick is to figure
out which is which. With any luck, the gnu and the penguin -- and
ultimately all but special-purpose programming -- belong to the 3rd
category.
--Ferren
The love of money is the root of all evil. Diogenes
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Dr Ferren MacIntyre | The Mews, Carnacrow
MRI, Nat. Uni. Ireland | HEADFORD, Co. Galway
Galway, Ireland | Ireland
+353 91 52 4411 x3202 | +353 93 35 0 27
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