Sprucing up open source's GPL foundation

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Adam Smith influenced Darwin...: ... in the view that nature is based on self-interest, competing to survive and prosper.

As Stephen J. Gould put it:
The theory of natural selection is a creative transfer to biology of Adam Smith?s basic argument for a rational economy: the balance and order of nature does not arise from a higher, external (divine) control, or from the existence of laws operating directly upon the whole, but from struggle among individuals for their own benefits.

Cobra A1 wrote:
We are supposed to supposed to support an economic system with checks and balances, with Adam Smith's invisible hand. We are not supposed to support an economic system where there are no checks on the prices (or royalties or licences).

The problem with laissez faire is that it's possible for people to game the market. For instance, the formation of a cartel to control prices and profits.
Government has to intervene in the markets to assure that they operate as they should, as Adam Smith described it.
Government also has to assure that corporations do not become too influential beyond the production of goods and services.

Separately, government also has to assist those whose lives have been disrupted by market changes so thoroughly that peoples' ability to support themselves and their families have been affected.

That's not a system of checks and balances. Government forebears from controlling the market when it operates as a market, but disciplines participants in the market which act against the market.

There have been systems of government which have considered government to be in control of the market, but these have failed to produce prosperity. The reason is the participants in a market are collectively wiser than a government official. Particularly a government official interested in gaining power for self-aggrandizement or to produce an ideologically dictated outcome.

These days, the market dictators are damaging, like Mario Monti. It's possible to disagree civilly over how much his actions are over-reaching.
In the past, murderous tyrants like Stalin and Mao and the less noticed but equally vicious thugs in Eastern Europe and elsewhere killed millions because their plans were more important than people.

So, when CobraA1 wrote:
Why are we considering only the companies involved? Are not the consumers involved also, and the competition? Have you thought about how this might affect the consumers? Economics does not, never did, and never will, live in a vaccuum. An economic system that does not consider all who are affected will destroy itself.

I think to myself: I am grateful for a market system that thinks only of the profits of the companies involved, and for a government which lets the market work except for preventing abuse of economic power.; Posted by: Anton Philidor Posted on: 12/28/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use