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Comment by qPM9l3XJrF | Hacker News Reader

Capitalism represents a solution to the tragedy of the commons: Privatize it. You guys are interpreting this as a takedown of capitalism when it's the exact opposite. Capitalism represents a solution to this issue. You might not like that solution, but this circumstance just goes to show that naive attempts to reinvent capitalism are unlikely to work.

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Contrarily to the common claim of capitalism, this wouldn’t be an optimal solution. Let’s say there are ten shepherds sharing the fields. You privatize it and in a short amount of time, there will be one shepherd left, ultra rich, and nine unemployed shepherds. So capitalism is a good system to optimize the value of the field, not its value for society.

If that actually happens, it will be because one of the shepherds is substantially better at flock management than the others, and their financial success allows them to buy fields from the other shepherds. The other shepherds will only sell their field if the good-flock-manager shepherd makes them an attractive offer (probably enough money such that they can live off the interest for the rest of their life). Not to mention, they very well might get a job working for the good-at-flock-management shepherd, possibly even at a raise since superior profits means there's more wealth to share. (Realistically there will probably be at least 2 sheep conglomerates competing on wages to hire the best shepherds. I'm not an ideologue, I'm cool with the government intervening in the economy a little bit to break up monopolies.)

> If that actually happens, it will be because one of the shepherds is substantially better at flock management than the others, and their financial success allows them to buy fields from the other shepherds.

IFF all the other shepherds even got a cut in the privatisation, then perhaps.

But there's no guarantee of that. That's certainly not how things went down in the last major privatisation the world has seen, that of post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s.

In some cases that applies, but I don't think a paid version of babel would be viable. Electronic goods resist commodifying. It only works sometimes (like in streaming music), but you need to put in a lot of technological and legal effort.

I believe that societies develop in lockstep with technology. The industrial revolution was only possible with the beginning civil society and capitalism; capitalism as we know it was only possible at the end of feudalism and absolutism. It is intertwined. New technologies tend to disrupt societies, you can go where the tech leads you (e.g. content can be copied without effort), or you can go the other way and adapt the tech to the society (say, not using machines in order to save jobs). That is why I think we are due for a big change in our political and economic system. What that is going to look like, and how much it will still look like capitalism, I don't know.

(Sorry for derailing the thread...)

>I don't think a paid version of babel would be viable.

It would if there were no open source alternatives. Bear in mind that most of the users are commercial organisations deriving value from it. They need something like it to solve their problems and if it isn't available for free then they will pay.

But you can't privatize the air?

Also, do you think the indian company was a perfect example of why capitalism should not involve itself with common goods? Unless you think it isnt a capitalist company despite presenting all aspect of it (including regulatory capture and threats of violence against slaves/employees).

Hm, a solution. They privatize it, and then companies will say to their webdevs, we don't want to pay extra for a profit of some capitalist, write the website without it.

So each webdev will end up with their own half-baked solution. Tragedy of the lack of commons!

I hear you cry, but that's irrational! Precisely, but so is not caring about the commons and letting them die.

I am not under an illusion that under capitalism, people cannot pass the buck (responsibility for maintenance) away too.

Companies make those sort of trade offs all the time, whether to buy or build. It doesn't take many to decide to buy to fund a small project like Babel. Not only that but you are likely to see competition driving the whole thing forward.

My point was that framing this as a tragedy of the commons problem, and here's the standard solution, can itself be disputed. The hidden assumption is that the capitalist will take the responsibility to take care of the thing, and provide it for a fair price, but it is by no means given. Certainly, there are examples of economic failures of this type as well. (Even in software, Unixes/Lisps..)

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