Comments on: Benkler, Bauwens, and the market

By: Atle

Atle — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 16:08:05 +0000

The free market IMO is not a useful term. The “free market” is an abstract market that only exists in theory. Businesses do not want free markets, they aim for monopoly as they want the predictability of safe profits rather than the risk that comes with completely free competition. Any market will always be based on a combination of co-operation and collaboration. Collaboration is the form of actual laws in the present system (e.g. property rights), social norms etc. Even a communist (in the liberterian anarchist sense) will have elements of competition (e.g. the better tech, the least damage to environment, fashion etc.).

Re: fair vs unfair markets this seems to be a bit of a diversion. Who decides what is fair? Profit making the big bigger might seem fair for those on the winning side, not so for the loosers. It would be more interested to posit the abstract free market against real needs and/or rights (the latter would nevertheless be based on some form of market where actual exchange/distribution takes place).

By: Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 07:51:31 +0000

I wonder if free market can be really used as a useful term; as you point out the present situation is based on monopolies, financial concentration, and historically, the present form of the market has been based on the expropriation of the vast majority of the population. It is regulated to profit the owners of concentrated wealth, to an unprecedented degree in the last 30 years. But even a free market in the Braudelian sense, would still be regulated, depeding on legal and social norms for property, contracts, etc… Perhaps it would be better to speak of fair vs. unfair markets?

Your point of the infrastructure is well taken. It is likely that wihtout DARPA, government intervention, and the role of academia, the current internet form would never have taken root. And the continued attempt by large telco’s to undermine net neutrality shows that they have still not accepted its existence in its current open form. I would rather see the following: mild to strong resistance from monopolistic business sectors; dual support/enablement and manipulation/restriction by the Web 2.0 netarchical sector, and only unreserved support from the civil society based user/producer community. Therefore, I’m willing to concede the role of many young entrepreneurs in developing participatory infrastructures, along with many others in the social arena. Because of the interdependent role of the public, private and social spheres (government, market, civil society), the origin and foundation of peer to peer systems cannot be credited to a single factor, but to a mixture of them.

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 13:55:20 +0000

Maybe Ben N. should read Braudel who stresses the opposition between capitalism and free markets. Capitalist accumulation is based on monopoly, if nothing else monopoly over the means of production. It is precisely this monopoly that P2P systems (and a host of other forms of socialized production systems -what Marx called ‘general intellect’ in Grundrisse pp. 706-11) has the potential to undermine, in some fields. And computers, networks and wires might very well be produced by non-market systems. The infrastructure of the net is not poduced in a market system, the software market is presently to monopolized to be much of a market etc.