Public money, private profits
Public money, private profits
cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/38044536
Protestation
Always.
In audio we have Max-Msp, create by Miller Pucket as a research project at IRCAM and then gave away to be commercialized by a private business. Pucket when ahead an re-created an open-source version of Max, Pure Data, but at that point that point most institutions had already adopted Max.
Dante is the biggest audio networking protocol out there. It's everywhere now. It was developed in Australia, entirely with government funding, and later privatize to Audinate.
There's tons of other examples.
In Québec, we have Hydro-Québec, a nationalize energy organization that gives energy sovereignty, low prices on electricity, and billions in profit. But guess what our entrepreneur-friendly prime minister wants to do.
Fuck capitalism.
Indeed. In germany, people have started a "democratic revolution" under the "terrorist organization" the next generation. They're starting to build "illegal" citizens assemblies which ask people on the streets what they really want instead of "representative democracy". Turns out, people want circular economy, outlawing of lobbying and so on.
I mean to an extent, but it's private actors who turn these ideas into factories pumping products all over the world. That, and iterative improvements, are where capitalist innovation lies. I'm no fan of capitalism, but this is one of the few things it has going for it.
Sadly, this is a common misconception. Capitalism has no inherent benefits in terms of innovation. The people innovating innovate no more or less because they are pitted against each other. The reason people are able to innovate is because they have education and expertise. It is pretty clear that, given the chance, even more people would try and innovate on stuff they like. That isnt the case because they would need to find a job in the field first and even if they were able to do it, capitalists would claim it for them. I can iterate on this for hours but the fact stands that the innovation of capitalism is a myth.
given the chance, even more people would try and innovate on stuff they like.
Innovation is needed for stuff nobody likes too, but that aside: People would innovate on stuff they like, but would they (and could they) organize the labor of thousands of people necessary to turn their innovation into real industrial production? Smartphones were built by passionate people with a vision, but the factories pumping out millions of them a year were built and staffed because there was money to be made. So-called capitalist innovation is a description of the fact not that capitalism encourages technological progress, but that capitalism provides a way for said progress to spread throughout society in a way no other economic system does.
Capitalists love wanking on about innovation, but it always ends up being innovations in great new ways to raise the top line, lower the bottom line, and make things worse for everyone else.
Where was this graphic when I was arguing with people about pharma companies "inventing" all their own medicine and deserving to keep the patents
Yeah, money is not made, it is extracted. You can't simply distribute innovation cheap, you need to hold it hostage so you can "make money" extracting it from people. Anything that distributes money/help to people is "destroying money" from the pov of people who extract it.