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Very few people are able to make a living today maintaining open source projects. As for public vs private planning - that's an argument as old as time. One t

Very few people are able to make a living today maintaining open source projects. As for public vs private planning - that's an argument as old as time. One thing to consider is that since the free market doesn't consider externalities, that's one reason why problems with the environment, inequality, declining health and human services, etc etc etc aren't being adequately addressed by the mainstream media. I view free speech, the airwaves and even the internet itself as public property. So it makes sense that having a greater share of public funding/ownership in those areas would be better than living under the corporate oligopolies that control it now.

smsm42 9y ago
> Very few people are able to make a living today maintaining open source projects. I think you underestimating the number, but even if true, if open source is still so strong despite of that - where is the problem? > I view free speech, the airwaves and even the internet itself as public property. Free speech is not a property, it is a human right. Internet is mostly distributed private property, and works just fine with that. As for airwaves, it's a mess, let's not go there, it's irrelevant for our discussion. > So it makes sense that having a greater share of public funding/ownership in those areas No it does not. How forcefully extracting money from people mostly unwilling to pay them and allocating them by opaque decisions of people who have little expertise in what is needed and mostly are bothered by looking good on TV is better than voluntary funding by consumers who know what they need? I mean, I can get if you say some things can not be financed otherwise, for reasons. Maybe for some things there's just no way to work out suitable non-governmental model that would work. But here we have a model that already, provably, works. And we have governmental model which is notorious for its poor efficiency, corruption, wastefullness and constant scandalous mismanagement. How it makes sense to replace a working model with it?

smsm42 9y ago

> Very few people are able to make a living today maintaining open source projects. I think you underestimating the number, but even if true, if open source is still so strong despite of that - where is the problem? > I view free speech, the airwaves and even the internet itself as public property. Free speech is not a property, it is a human right. Internet is mostly distributed private property, and works just fine with that. As for airwaves, it's a mess, let's not go there, it's irrelevant for our discussion. > So it makes sense that having a greater share of public funding/ownership in those areas No it does not. How forcefully extracting money from people mostly unwilling to pay them and allocating them by opaque decisions of people who have little expertise in what is needed and mostly are bothered by looking good on TV is better than voluntary funding by consumers who know what they need? I mean, I can get if you say some things can not be financed otherwise, for reasons. Maybe for some things there's just no way to work out suitable non-governmental model that would work. But here we have a model that already, provably, works. And we have governmental model which is notorious for its poor efficiency, corruption, wastefullness and constant scandalous mismanagement. How it makes sense to replace a working model with it?