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"The big indicator should be that the 3 foundations of the current system, as described in the presentation - can all be exchanged for each other. Land for Capt

"The big indicator should be that the 3 foundations of the current system, as described in the presentation - can all be exchanged for each other. Land for Captial, Capital for Labour, Labour for Land. Try exchanging information for any of these, you won't have much luck, unless we're talking trade secrets or blackmail. Try exchanging open information for a piece of land and see how you get on." Governments give literally acres of land and tax breaks and concessions and fall all over themselves when some techie company or other opens a call center. That is literally trading little old information for all three. I give you my domain knowledge and you give me labor (call center workers), land (um, land), and capital (tax incentives/breaks/concessions, whatever you wanna call it... cash). Microsoft, aside from outsourced Flextronics-made XBox 360s and Zunes, make information. "Moving information around is just playing with the surplus production given to us by efficient manufacturing and agriculture" Moving information around is how you can use your Idaho bank card in Bangalore. It doesn't make your bank worth less than Juanito the beet farmer in Brazil.

brc 16y ago
>Moving information around is how you can use your Idaho bank card in Bangalore. It doesn't make your bank worth less than Juanito the beet farmer in Brazil. Thank you for proving my point. Without Juanito the beet farmer, and the stereotypical mid-western farmer or Texan oil-man being efficient and extracting a profit from their activities, there is no surplus. Without the beets (and wheat,and beef, etc) none of us get fed. Without piles of invested long-term capital from capital markets you don't have trans-ocean cables, and without that you don't have any way of talking from Bangalore to Idaho. Without the mines to dig up the minerals you don't have planes, and without oil wells you don't have fuel, without pilots and baggage handlers you don't get to go to Bangalore. So you wouldn't need your bankcard. The whole reason we can actually get to Bangalore to use our bank card is because those in primary production do it efficiently enough that not all of us are involved in doing it. That's the surplus production (and thus, wealth) that allows us to do these things. Look, I'm not anti-tech in the slightest - this is how I make my living. I'm just imploring tech people not to lose touch with that the industry really is, not to let your fee lose touch with the ground and the real economy that we're all here to support and improve.

brc 16y ago

>Moving information around is how you can use your Idaho bank card in Bangalore. It doesn't make your bank worth less than Juanito the beet farmer in Brazil. Thank you for proving my point. Without Juanito the beet farmer, and the stereotypical mid-western farmer or Texan oil-man being efficient and extracting a profit from their activities, there is no surplus. Without the beets (and wheat,and beef, etc) none of us get fed. Without piles of invested long-term capital from capital markets you don't have trans-ocean cables, and without that you don't have any way of talking from Bangalore to Idaho. Without the mines to dig up the minerals you don't have planes, and without oil wells you don't have fuel, without pilots and baggage handlers you don't get to go to Bangalore. So you wouldn't need your bankcard. The whole reason we can actually get to Bangalore to use our bank card is because those in primary production do it efficiently enough that not all of us are involved in doing it. That's the surplus production (and thus, wealth) that allows us to do these things. Look, I'm not anti-tech in the slightest - this is how I make my living. I'm just imploring tech people not to lose touch with that the industry really is, not to let your fee lose touch with the ground and the real economy that we're all here to support and improve.