[P2P-F] Douglas Rushkoff on Getting Past Free Through Radical Abundance

[Karl Robillard]

I just watched Mr. Rushkoff's brief talk about "getting past free" posted on 
the P2P blog [1].  His fixation on currency creeps me out.  The FLOSS 
methodology exists outside of markets and money (while still being able to 
interact with them) and this is why it increases human freedom.  Rather than 
being constrained to the current conventional concepts of political economy 
which focus on exchange value, we now have the opportunity to re-consider the 
advantages of the commons and use value.  He completely ignores this in his 
talk and advocates for more variations of exchange value.

Yesterday I came across an article on how the internet is being co-opted by 
corporations [2].  This is nothing new to anyone here, but the interesting 
part was about the Lauderdale Paradox where I learned of James Maitland and 
his book "An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth and into the 
Means and Causes of its Increase" (1804).  In stark contrast to Rushkoff, 
Maitland makes it clear that public wealth is diminished when we attach 
exchange values to things.

Rushkoff also talks a bit about the lack of creativity in FLOSS and finds the 
remix culture to be somehow lacking.  At this point in time I believe that all 
new ideas are always just variations on what currently exists (i.e. creativity 
is a vague term of idolatry for the act of making specific connections between 
existing ideas), so his criticism here seems pointless to me.  He almost seems 
to be saying that sharing ideas freely is actually harmful to society.   As 
someone who deeply appreciates being empowered by open access to highly 
technical knowledge this attitude makes no sense to me.


-Karl


[1] http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/video-of-the-day-douglas-rushkoff-of-getting-
past-free-through-radical-abundance/2012/01/28

[2] http://monthlyreview.org/2011/03/01/the-internets-unholy-marriage-to-
capitalism