Phil Graham on 26 Jul 2000 20:46:57 -0000 |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
Re: <nettime> Terror in Tune Town |
>At 09:12 AM 26/07/00 -0400, you wrote: >>I wanted to suggest a non-philosohical way of discussing the values of >>intellectual property, the labors of the artist, the labors of the >>distribution system etc. > >A non-philosophical way of discussing value, property and labour - good >one. You mean by using utility curves. Utility curves have a philosophy >(cf Bohm-Bahtwerk, Meinong, Hayek, Schumpeter, Marshall, RB Perry, ad >infinitum). In fact they took so much philosophical work to legitimise, >that the marginal value philosophers exhausted themselves by 1916. > >>At just the rudimentary level of microeconomics (and this would be the >>extent >>of my economics background) it would seem that Napster has created a >>fundamental shift in supply and demand. They have created a market with an >>infinite supply. > >Since the age of mechanical reproduction of art, supply has been >theoretically infinite. Since the invention of the cassette recorder, it >has been practically infinite (my progeny and I can theoretically make >copies of Miss american pie till the end of time). Art is interation with >material, not the material itself. > > >>A supply/demand graph will show that as the supply of a product increases, >>the price decreases. > >No. In an ideal philosophical world that may be true. When philosophy >meets the muck of reality, which includes monopoly, price fixing, common >human greed, inequal capacity to buy, etc, idealised utility graphs are >not much use, despite what the current crop have to say (that's why 95% of >economic predictions are wrong - even on the toss of a coin, you'd be >unlucky to get less than 50% wrong). > >>It would be reasonable to infer that if supply is >>infinitely increased, the price would approach (and practically speaking, >>come to) zero. > >I thought this was a non-philosophical discussion. Now we have an infinite >supply of something. > > >>This would be true of any product. If the supply of bread increased (and the >>demand stayed the same), the price of bread would decrease. If there was an >>infinite supply of bread, bread would cost nothing. > >Once the supply of bread exceeds the capacity for people to eat it, it >has, for all practical purposes, reached infinity. Why then, is tons of >bread thrown out each day and it still costs money? You are eliding the >capacity of people, social conventions, inequalities to access, etc .... >this is pure philosophy. > >>And no matter how much >>labor was exerted to make the bread, the market could not bear a higher >>price, and as a result people in the bread production line would be >>forced to >>accept no remuneration for their labor. > >Who would force them to make it? Who would force them to work for nothing? > > >>Air, for example. Their is not a cash market for air, because, for practical >>purposes, the supply of air is infinite and no market could bear a monetary >>cost for the product. > >There is a cash market for air. It's called the carbon tax. > >>How would Napster be different? At the level of the album, cassette, compact >>disc, etc. there were limits on supply in any given market which allowed the >>market to set price based. This does not hold within the Napster community. >>While an mp3 may materially exist as a file somewhere on someone's computer, >>for all intents and purposes, the file exists in an infinite capacity as it >>can endlessly be replicated. > >So. What is the difference between napster and a cassette recorder? Are >you saying that a mode of distribition creates an infinity? > > >>I'll be honest. I'm not sure where to go from here with this argument. Will >>the producers stop making their products? Probably not. The bread maker in >>the infinite bread market would likely sustain their income by producing a >>different product. What alternative products can a musician make? A live >>show >>is an example of a musical product with a limited supply. Musicians can make >>their living touring, perhaps. (As Shakespeare made his living with stage >>productions of his plays, not by writing them or selling their text). > >Which Shakespeare? This is all as devoid of reality as the utility curve. > > >>Just a different way of approaching this debate. If they're around this >>list, >>I'd like to hear an economist's view on this. > >Sorry to be so harsh, Pat. I hate marginal value theory. It's just so >barren of any reality. > >Phil ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Opinions expressed in this email are my own unless otherwise stated. Phil Graham Lecturer (Communication) Graduate School of Management University of Queensland 617 3381 1083 www.geocities/pw.graham/ www.uq.edu.au/~uqpgraha http://www.angelfire.com/ga3/philgraham/index.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------- # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net