I’d like to start a discussion about how open source technologies/content and the emergent, participatory projects that create them constitute a new economic paradigm that mainstream economics doesn’t address. There is a growing community of people who see the proliferation of open technologies as the end of material scarcity and the beginning of a new economic paradigm. How can Austrian Economics help us think about open source?
You are making an assumption that “Open Source” will be the preferred principal on managing rights to ideas that can not be scarce. My issue with that is that it is the property rights to an idea that are not market mechanisms but levied upon the market through force. I would say that Open Source is superior to most methods of assigning property rights to non-scarce items but not the only way. Market actors may find ways to secure ideas or will dump Intellectual Property completely in the future.
You can say with certainty that Austrian Economics with its focus on the entrepreneur and the consumer will provide the best analysis of the effects of much larger scale usage of Open Source and other mechanisms to weaken the absolute Copyright and Patent rules.
“…the proliferation of open technologies [is] the end of material scarcity and the beginning of a new economic paradigm.”
If at all, only to the extent that an “open technology” can serve the end of one actor, now the end of another, etc. However, always there will remain (countless) individual ends that can’t be served by these technologies imo.
For instance, technically speaking, when I access Mises wiki, I’m still using resources to do so: my computer, electricity, my dwelling. Unless open-source technologies are on tap to replace these things and others like them, material scarcity remains omnipresent imo.
First off thanks for this response. I’m certain Austrian Economics will do best as well.
The intent of ‘open source’ is to provide access to the ‘source’ so that participants can use, modify and improve the technologies they’re using. Where does the ‘participant’ who adds value to a technology fit into the entreprenuer - consumer paradigm? Does this role of ‘participant’ create the opportunity for full employment because anyone can create value by contributing to open projects? Does the participants contribute become ‘monetizable’ when open approached to the technology of money proliferate and allow us to overcome the current monopolization of our monetary system by central banks? Could the development of these technologies be viewed as an imperative of the Austrian Economic community?
That’s precisely the purpose of open source: to replace the scarce, proptietary intellectual property of the computer, electrical systems, construction materials, etc with open systems so that the only limitation to having an abundance of computers, electrical systems and construction materials were a function of the raw materials and labor neccissary to produce them. Considering the increases in computational power, the amount of energy provided by the sun and the abundance of the materials neccissary for the construction of dwellings, it seems to me not only extremely possible but extremely likely that in the not too distant future the items you describe will be abundant for increasingly larger numbers of people - but it requires us to commit more energy to the development of open technologies.
Also, I’m pretty sure mises.org runs Drupal so our conversation here can be considered an open experience as well. 
Made this post a little while ago on this exact thing: https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/yochai-benklers-wealth-of-networks/16105
Nice little book and video on this exact subject:
http://www.ted.com/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_source_economics.html
What you describe are technological innovations—which render productivity more efficient. It will never put an end to scarcity. Why not? No matter how great one’s standard of living, one’s ends remain unsatisfied—because they are effectively limitless.
Material scarcity, which is more precisely what I’m describing, is limited because we can only consume so much due to the constraints of time. Once we transcend material scarcity, the challenge of self-actualization/satisfaction becomes an issue of abundance: there are too many ways for us to spend our time, not too few.
With all due respect, your argument is an example of wishful thinking imo.
Wordpress, custom ASPX code, Wikipedia, and Community Server. I do not believe they run Drupal, or have run it for a long time. JFYI.
Actually, material scarcity is limited because reality has a physical dimension. There is only so much “stuff”. Also, when it comes to time, consumption is not the issue, but rather production. We only have so much time to produce. In order to consume, we must first produce.
Tell that to these folks: http://vimeo.com/16431347
They’re just one small, unfunded group in Missouri but there are hundreds of hacker/maker spaces around the world and they’re all beginning to come together thanks to the internet and a lot of hard work. Open hardware is going to hit the mainstream soon, and when it does it’s going to create an opportunity for introducing people to a new perspective on economics.
What new economic paradigm are people going to be introduced to due to the open-source movement?
Open-source hardware, like open-source software, is more about the freedom of innovation than the freedom of availability. The source code for the hardware will be open for people to change and/or modify it, but that does not mean that the hardware itself is going to be freely available to any- and everyone; nor does that imply that it will be without cost.
My bad with the Drupal call. This one helluva Wordpress though. Wordpress and Media Wiki are open source, so still an open experience.
My dictionary (widget) defines scarcity as “(1) insufficient for demand; (2) occuring in small numbers.” There is a limited amount of air, but even in these polluted times, I don’t think anyone would argue there is a scarcity of air because the lack of air isn’t preventing us from doing (almost) anything.
Consumption and production are both issues, but can we agree that if we can produce more than we want, then we’re in a state of material abundance?
There’s two ways to get to that end: consume less, produce more. Spirituality makes people want to consume less. Technology enables people to produce more. I argue that the widespread use of open source technologies will enable people to produce more than they need, and thus escape material scarcity.
Ricarpe, if you have a computer, you can own/run Wordpress, Media Wiki and other easily deployable open source software programs. Nothing is stopping you from ‘having’ this technology so it is abundant.
Hardware is more complicated because it requires raw materials and human compiling/construction. Surely there are logistical challenges to freely available hardware but I if people enjoy harvesting the materials and building the hardware, is there really a cost? If we enjoy the act of production, can we ‘consume’ it? Does that activity produce a truly free product?
The LvMI source code is open source iirc, so if anyone wants to build a mirror, or setup a regional Mises site, they can use LvMI as a base.
I don’t like either of those definitions. As I mentioned, reality has a physical component. Where there is only room for one fruit, there cannot be an apple and an orange. We do not have the capacity to tranform pears into bananas or lead into gold. For us, these things have a finite supply, even if it exceeds our current demand.
Demand is infinite. Someone with a million dollars wants two million. Or they want a second wife. Or they want a better education for their kids. Or they want to work less. Or they want breast implants. People do not stop wanting things. We can have abundance in order to satisfy some demands, but we can never satisfy all demands and still be human.
This is known as saving.
There are all sorts of psychological reasons why people choose to consume less.
Technological advancement is only possible with capital investment. Capital accumulation is the result of saving.
I agree with the first part, the second part however conflicts with AE.
Yes, it is abundant if you have a computer and an internet connection, and the time to download and install, and money to purchase hosting/domains etc.
Hmm, those are all costs…
Opportunity cost. Time is a scarce factor.
Do you think miners mine rare earth metals, and people work in foundries, and paint factories, and assemble circuit boards because they enjoy it more than having sex, or sleeping in, watching Oprah, or playing video games? Sure, maybe some, we all have unique value scales, but an economy based on people only doing what brings them joy without material compensation, while coincidentally achieving material “abundance” is a utopian fantasy.
You can’t eliminate scarcity because the demand for wealth is essentially unlimited, and the means of production will always be limited. The rate of progress may accelerate with technology, but this doesn’t mean that we will achieve a world of post-scarcity. It means that the rate at which we increase our wealth accelerates.
Just because something has physical properties doesn’t make it scarce. As I said before, air is not scarce.
Just because people always want things doesn’t mean their demand for material resources is limitless. Once people have met their basic needs, they begin to demand experiences, not material goods. I argue this challenge is one of abundance - too many choices - not scarcity.
Just because I consume less and produce more doesn’t neccissarily mean I accumulate savings. I might simply enjoy the act of production.
Agreed about spirituality. I have a tendency to equate pscyhology and spirituality, which is probably not a good idea in forums.
Agree about capital investment/accumulation although I have a feeling that my approach to those concepts is slightly different than yours.
Can we agree that it’s possible to escape material scarcity, but not experiential scarcity? It’s possible to have an abundance of material things but not an abundance of positive experiences?
I agree there are still costs associated with this activity but they’re continuing to go down very quickly and soon will become quite marginal.
Do we have an abundance of time or a scarcity of it? Do we have an abundance of ways to spend our time or a scarcity of options? Definitely tough questions.
It definitely sounds like a utopian fantasy but I think it’s possible and becoming more so as people interested in living this way form broader and deeper networks within which they can gift resources to each other.
Johnathan, I agree that the demand for wealth is essentially unlimited because wealth is experiental and people constantly want more positive experiences. I don’t think the means of production are neccissarily limited. A good song can be enjoyed by everyone and, hopefully very shortly, created by anyone using free and open source tools.
Just because something has physical properties doesn’t make it scarce. As I said before, air is not scarce.
Oxygen is not an economic good. An economic good is defined as a good that requires the application of labor (at some point during the process) to produce. Economic goods are scarce because labor is fundamentally scarce (i.e. time is scarce).
Just because people always want things doesn’t mean their demand for material resources is limitless. Once people have met their basic needs, they begin to demand experiences, not material goods.
Really? Then how do you explain the demand for horse buggees (instead of using your own two legs and feet)? Or then, the demand for automobiles? The demand for cathode ray tube televisions? The demand for plasma televisions? The demand for LCD televisions? The demand for food well above that which is essentially necessary?
Humans are always looking to garner greater satisfaction, or utility, from their actions. Greater production gives man the ability to do just this, and thus the demand for wealth is essentially limitless.
Just because I consume less and produce more doesn’t neccissarily mean I accumulate savings. I might simply enjoy the act of production.
This may be true on an individual scale in a division of labor society, where you can borrow the accumulated capital of others, but on-the-whole the only way you can produce is by applying means of production (or accumulated capital goods). But, I’m not sure what this has to do with the topic of scarcity.
Can we agree that it’s possible to escape material scarcity, but not experiential scarcity?
No. Maybe an individual can stop demanding physical economic goods, but I think that this doesn’t apply to most individuals. What percentage of the present population are monks?
Do we have an abundance of time or a scarcity of it? Do we have an abundance of ways to spend our time or a scarcity of options? Definitely tough questions.
It’s actually a simple question. Man will always choose to use his time in what he perceives to be most efficient way (efficiency defined here as the choice which maximizes utility). There is always a way to garner greater utility. This is the point of production. So, we do definately face a “scarcity of options”. I’m not sure your first question makes sense. Are there twenty-four hours in a day? Yes. Is there a physical limit to the amount of time you can pit towards production? Yes.
I don’t think the means of production are neccissarily limited. A good song can be enjoyed by everyone and, hopefully very shortly, created by anyone using free and open source tools.
A song is subject to diminishing marginal returns.