On Wed, 11 Nov 1998, William Chops Westfield wrote:

> To claim that one should give away software for free, and make money on
> "support", "because it's a service economy" is equivilent to denying that
> creativity has value - instead postulating that only labor has value.
>
> This is evil.
>
> It was the major mistake of the communist realm not to understand that
> wealth can be CREATED from mere thought.  Assuming that there is a fixed
> amount of wealth in the world, and trying to figure out how to divide it
> up "fairly", is a task doomed to failure.  Instead, build a society that
> encourages the creation of NEW wealth.

  I mosty aggree with this, but I'd like to add that a service and
information based society is not among the ones that create a lot of real
wealth. A lot of virtual wealth but not the real kind, or very little of
it. Apparently societies in the phase of expansive capitalism are the ones
that generate the most tangible wealth, at the level of the average
individual.. There remains to be seen what this (and the virtual wealth of
post-industrial capitalist states) leads to. I am not sure that I want to
find out in this lifetime. I certainly don't like the things coming up
nowadays on the stock markets and in other domains. This is way way way
OT.

Peter