Re: [projectvrm] MaidSafe claims to deliver world's first 'safe' network

[Phil Windley < >]

> 
>> Again, this network could offer a way to earn money from 
>> readers without having to rely upon - or resort to - advertizing.
> 
> 'Earn money from readers'?
> 
> One generally earns money from work.
> 
> But of course, an author could invite his readers to pay him for his work.
>> 

This is only half of the story.  People and companies earn money for either 
labor or rents. Rents happen because someone has exclusive control over 
capital or rights of some kind (i.e. the right to publish a particular work, 
manufacturer a specific product, drive a car for hire in a specific city, run 
a hotel, etc.)

To ignore the role capital and exclusive rights have played through time is 
to significantly slant the story.  

You may not like that this model exists and has existed, but cannot simply 
wish it away by ignoring it. 

Readers of a book aren't really paying an author for her work, even if they 
pay her directly. That is, unless they are paying her for her labor directly 
and then gaining ownership of end product it is not labor.  A self-publishing 
author is working for herself and producing a piece of property which she 
then exchanges for rents when people pay her to read it.  We could properly 
account for the time she put into writing the book as "labor" at some going 
rate, but the remainder would be rent on capital based on the value of the 
property (i.e. book) itself.  The reason to account for this as rents on 
capital is simple: the book can continue to produce a cash flow regardless of 
whether the author puts any more work into it at all. These cash flows can 
continue even after the authors death. Hence they are rents on capital, not 
payment for labor. 

Who cares? I do. I think it's a mistake to somehow equate VRM with movements 
on wealth inequality etc. however worthy they may be. VRM is about giving 
people tools to support the buy side, leading to a balance of power between 
vendors and customers. We cannot and should not try to put it forward as a 
panacea to all social ills. 

If we attempt to define things like "publishing" as "bad" and not part of 
VRM, we'll end up as Occupy. I fear that VRM can't be seen as anti-corporate 
or else it will fail to be adopted in any degree. I similarly fear attempts 
to cast VRM as "about privacy" or "taking back control" since they have 
similar messages. 

Big tent. 

--Phil--