h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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Compare and Contrast Communism and Open Source...

Another point worth considering when comparing the scientific track record of communist and capitalist countries, say in the first three quarters of the twentieth century, is that many people educated in communist countries escaped to capitalist countries. Do you count work produced by them as work by capitalist countries or communist ones? I think the distinction would probably make a significant difference, but I'm not sure.

A modern day phenomena which illustrates the same point is that the US has the most and the best academics in the world, but many (most?) of them were not born or educated in the US - they move there because US universities pay better.

You have to be very careful with figures, distinguishing what is fact from what is interpretation - the latter being heavily theory laden and model driven. Poor models used to interpret accurate facts give meaningless results.

Ben: Communism was popularised by a bearded geek with an ego the size of Tenerife. Linux has Richard Stallman and Alan Cox.

Communism differs from open source in one big respect: you don't have to contribute to OSS projects in order to benefit - no one's going to come round your house and terrorize you if you fail to submit a Mozilla bug report. Also there are plenty of 'good capitalists' making money from Open Source. I don't think you could accuse Sun, IBM, Hewlett Packard Oracle, Apple and even Microsoft (what is Hotmail running on?) of excessive altruism.

> "There are plenty of 'good capitalists' making money from Open Source."

And there are plenty of capitalists making money from communism. You can find a lot of them in Hong Kong, for example.

Personally, I've seen some (not all) Open Source people complain about leachers(sp?) who take but don't share - so there are social pressures to submit those bug reports. Social pressures are important in communism - far more so than state 'terrorism'.

-MyRedDice - being 'terrorised' by his landlord I'll be chucked out if I don't pay hir £250 - that's blackmail!

NO BLACKMAIL!!!!

So, what about this hybrid model for a society; small communes that are internally socialist and have the goal of supporting their citizens as well as possible but interact with each other on a capitalist level. The communes are strictly opt-in, so that anyone who wishes to can leave them and try to manage in the larger capitalist environment, but life is much easier in the less rigourous environment of the communes...
The communes also are kept small, so that everybody at least casually knows everybody else. I think that is one of the factors in keeping things like monasteries and communes and the like together, the fact that everybody knows everybody else and so has a face and a person attached to who they'd be cheating, and is therefore less likely to.

This model also has the advantage of being perfectly implementable; the larger structure, the one that needs to be government-sized, should be perfectly similar to the current system of government in operation in many countries of the world.
The other level may be rendered more feasible by a generous application of technology, things that make it possible to have a more productive commune materially without needing so much work by individual members. It may be that the sort of technological edge that the Open Source movement gains from it's volunteer-based (largely) non-commercial drive will be in effect for this sort of commune.

Just my two bits of theory,

-Johann

This post interests me because for one I am a Socialist and I believe it is the only way forward. A lot of the other posts on the forum relate to the failings of Russia, Poland.. etc. in revolution. This is because a revolution must be global. A stand-alone Socialist state can't exist. Also one oppression and authoritarianism, I do not and completely abhor the Stalinist way, but the present ruling class will be overthrown in the event of a revolution. These people will have their flamboyant and extravagant way of life oppressed. Isn't that the lesser of two evils? At the moment they completely destroy and oppress the majority of the population of the world. Is ending greed a bad thing? Also greed is not inbuilt, if you are unsure of this look into psychological research which is increasing showing altruism as a dominant human trait. If there are any reasons why a socialist society should not be strived for these reasons obviously haven't been thought about hard enough.

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I do not think this will ever be possible. But it could be good if it was...