[extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley

[Chris Phoenix]

Spike wrote:
> 
> Corporations are collections of people making a living,
> creating wealth by making things, creating jobs and
> wellbeing.  Corporations are our friends!  If real power
> lies with corporations, then real power lies with people
> working together to create wealth, which sounds good to me.
> Far better this way than with real power being wielded by
> those who create nothing but merely redistribute the wealth
> that corporations create, while destroying much of that
> wealth in the process.  This seems to me to be perfectly
> compatible with libertarian ideals.

There are different kinds of power, just as there are different kinds of
problems to solve.  "How much should a corporation pay for the right to
kill someone?" is an appalling question.  (I mean deliberately kill an
individual; random fractional deaths may be a different case.)   But
"How much should a policeman pay for the right to kill someone?" is
equally appalling.  

The words "pay" and "kill" simply don't belong in the same
sentence--unless you're in the Mafia, which is an appalling
organization.  But you should also notice that the policeman (Guardian)
has very different imperatives than the corporation (Commercial).  

Creating wealth by maximizing benefit on voluntary transactions is one
kind of problem.  Corporations do that very well.  Unfortunately,
sometimes big corporations start taking on Guardian characteristics.

Minimizing loss from zero-sum or negative-sum transactions is a very
different kind of problem.  It may require the use of force or
deception--both of which corporations are not supposed to practice. 
(Limiting openness is not the same as active deception.)

Interestingly, there's at least one other way to create wealth:
unlimited-sum transactions (Information), in which the friction and cost
are negligible, and the benefit is substantial and not proportional to
the cost.  Open Source is a great example of this, and it's enabled by
the unlimited-sum nature of copying text files.  And although some
corporations are figuring out ways to work with unlimited-sum entities,
corporations are not that kind of entity, can never be, and should not
try.  This explains the Napster problem and the Internet bubble.

Guardian and Commercial as separate systems come straight from Systems
of Survival by Jane Jacobs.  Building on a paper by Pat Gratton, I added
Information as a third system, and the analysis of how the three systems
relate to zero-sum, positive-sum, and unlimited-sum transactions.

You can read more (including a tie-in to molecular nanotechnology) at:
http://CRNano.org/systems.htm

Can corporations solve Guardian-type problems?  No.  Will Guardian-type
problems always exist?  Yes.  If we didn't have government, we'd have to
invent it.

Chris

--
Chris Phoenix                                  cphoenix at CRNano.org
Director of Research
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology          http://CRNano.org