Some weeks ago Bill Gates made this
comment in an interview with CNet News:
"There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."
When I heard these comments, I cheered. It was about time somebody started calling these folks what they are. But there has been a furious backlash against Gates about these comments from a number of bloggers and websites. Gates himself has backtracked a bit, though he hasn't given up his point, only his description "sort of communists."
But Gates was right. Haven't you noticed that it's always the same crowd is who is in favor of, for instance, municipal broadband networks, open source software, elimination of pharmaceutical patents, Grokster, etc.?
I've written about this before, recently here (Washington Times) and here (Dallas Business Journal).
There is a movement that is certainly against the ownership of things, anti-corporate, anti-U.S. global dominance, anti-having to pay for things. These folks might be called the global anti-capitalist movement, or the free-culture movement, or whatever. But their positions on issues are predictable, and they certainly qualify as communist in their philosophy.
Or Commonists. Over at IP Central, Patrick Ross has a nice blog entry that summarizes this very well. He calls them "commonists." Patrick is exactly right, Bill Gates was exactly right, and we need to stop being afraid to identify these impulses as what they are.
Open source*, municipal networks, prescription drug reimportation, Grokster, pushing a "development agenda" at WIPO, opposing software patents--these aren't just separate, unrelated issues. They'll all peas from the same philosophical pod, and we need to recognize them as such.
The problem is, this global anti-capitalist movement is well-organized and active. And they're achieving their goals by doing an end-run around the U.S. political process, focusing their efforts with international bodies such as WIPO, the UN, WTO, WHO, and the EU. Browse the list of "civil society" organizations at WIPO, for example. You'll see dozens of organizations that are all part of this movement.
I'm not prepared to label the motivations of all proponents of open source software or municipal broadband networks as bad, but their thinking is wrong-headed, and their methods have failed in the past, and will fail in the future.
Ultimately, the question is what you believe about the profit motive. The genius and success of capitalism is it's recognition of the profit-motive as the superior way to incentivize human beings to do things of use to others.
Communists (and commonists) think human beings will continue to do things of use to others, indeed, do them at a greater volume, if the profit motive is removed. In a way, they have a more hopeful view of human nature than do capitalists.
But their view of human nature is, unfortunately, wrong. That's the basic flaw. Humans have an inherent sense of property, of the right to own what they create, and to own the fruits of their labor. Humans will certainly behave in an altruistic way on occasion, particularly if they are motivated to do so by an external source of values, such as religion. But building an economy (or a microeconomy) on the hope of altruism has never worked.
Ultimately, someone MUST pay for the development of broadband networks, or pharmaceutical research, or whatever. So, when you finally get down to the details of free-culture alternative methods of R&D, you always find government force. Ultimately, they want people taxed to pay for what they want. Pharmaceutical R&D, for instance, would be paid for by new taxes, which would go into a pool of money administered by an oligarchy of international bureaucrats. Municipal networks are either paid for by taxpayers directly or by taxpayers indirectly as they retire bonds, etc. Whether a particular taxpayer values broadband enough to actually subscribe, they still end up paying for it by government force.
It's the same old impulse to get what you want and force your wishes upon others through government power, regardless of what you call it.
_____________
* I should qualify my comments on open source software. I'm not AGAINST open-source software. The software I'm using for this blog is free and, I believe, open-source. If somebody wants to invest work in something and then give it away, that's fine with me. What I'm against is the assumption that somehow open source is morally superior, and I'm also against tilting the playing field in a way that favors open source over proprietary software. And you almost always find that proponents of open source software don't simply want the right to develop valuable products and then have them licensed through open source. No, they want to tear down proprietary software as well. They want laws passed that make life more difficult for proprietary software, or they want laws requiring purchasing quotas for open source products, etc. They know their model won't succeed without destroying their opposition. That's what I'm opposed to.
"There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."
When I heard these comments, I cheered. It was about time somebody started calling these folks what they are. But there has been a furious backlash against Gates about these comments from a number of bloggers and websites. Gates himself has backtracked a bit, though he hasn't given up his point, only his description "sort of communists."
But Gates was right. Haven't you noticed that it's always the same crowd is who is in favor of, for instance, municipal broadband networks, open source software, elimination of pharmaceutical patents, Grokster, etc.?
I've written about this before, recently here (Washington Times) and here (Dallas Business Journal).
There is a movement that is certainly against the ownership of things, anti-corporate, anti-U.S. global dominance, anti-having to pay for things. These folks might be called the global anti-capitalist movement, or the free-culture movement, or whatever. But their positions on issues are predictable, and they certainly qualify as communist in their philosophy.
Or Commonists. Over at IP Central, Patrick Ross has a nice blog entry that summarizes this very well. He calls them "commonists." Patrick is exactly right, Bill Gates was exactly right, and we need to stop being afraid to identify these impulses as what they are.
Open source*, municipal networks, prescription drug reimportation, Grokster, pushing a "development agenda" at WIPO, opposing software patents--these aren't just separate, unrelated issues. They'll all peas from the same philosophical pod, and we need to recognize them as such.
The problem is, this global anti-capitalist movement is well-organized and active. And they're achieving their goals by doing an end-run around the U.S. political process, focusing their efforts with international bodies such as WIPO, the UN, WTO, WHO, and the EU. Browse the list of "civil society" organizations at WIPO, for example. You'll see dozens of organizations that are all part of this movement.
I'm not prepared to label the motivations of all proponents of open source software or municipal broadband networks as bad, but their thinking is wrong-headed, and their methods have failed in the past, and will fail in the future.
Ultimately, the question is what you believe about the profit motive. The genius and success of capitalism is it's recognition of the profit-motive as the superior way to incentivize human beings to do things of use to others.
Communists (and commonists) think human beings will continue to do things of use to others, indeed, do them at a greater volume, if the profit motive is removed. In a way, they have a more hopeful view of human nature than do capitalists.
But their view of human nature is, unfortunately, wrong. That's the basic flaw. Humans have an inherent sense of property, of the right to own what they create, and to own the fruits of their labor. Humans will certainly behave in an altruistic way on occasion, particularly if they are motivated to do so by an external source of values, such as religion. But building an economy (or a microeconomy) on the hope of altruism has never worked.
Ultimately, someone MUST pay for the development of broadband networks, or pharmaceutical research, or whatever. So, when you finally get down to the details of free-culture alternative methods of R&D, you always find government force. Ultimately, they want people taxed to pay for what they want. Pharmaceutical R&D, for instance, would be paid for by new taxes, which would go into a pool of money administered by an oligarchy of international bureaucrats. Municipal networks are either paid for by taxpayers directly or by taxpayers indirectly as they retire bonds, etc. Whether a particular taxpayer values broadband enough to actually subscribe, they still end up paying for it by government force.
It's the same old impulse to get what you want and force your wishes upon others through government power, regardless of what you call it.
_____________
* I should qualify my comments on open source software. I'm not AGAINST open-source software. The software I'm using for this blog is free and, I believe, open-source. If somebody wants to invest work in something and then give it away, that's fine with me. What I'm against is the assumption that somehow open source is morally superior, and I'm also against tilting the playing field in a way that favors open source over proprietary software. And you almost always find that proponents of open source software don't simply want the right to develop valuable products and then have them licensed through open source. No, they want to tear down proprietary software as well. They want laws passed that make life more difficult for proprietary software, or they want laws requiring purchasing quotas for open source products, etc. They know their model won't succeed without destroying their opposition. That's what I'm opposed to.