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Comment by card_zero | Hacker News Reader

So you put these all in the same category: gaining knowledge, gaining abilities, and just obtaining things.

I gatekeep my bike, I keep it behind a gate. If you break the gate open and democratize my bike, you're an idiot.

I'm not sure how you're getting that from their post? None of the four things mentioned (book publishing, web publishing, open-source software, computer hardware) involve stealing someone's property, he's saying that the ability to produce those things widened and the cost went down massively, so more people were able to gain access to them. Nobody stole your bike, but the bike patents expired and a bunch of bike factories popped up, so now everyone can get a cheap bike.

I did have misgivings about saying that because I'm from the old "information wants to be free" school. But the subject was idiocy, and the point isn't to say that the bike was stolen, but that the bike-taker didn't do anything clever, or have much of a learning experience.

Maybe it's of value that any idiot can do this, but we're still idiots.

it is more like:

You gatekeep your bike, you keep it behind a gate, you don't let anyone else ride it.

Your neighbor got a nicer bike for Christmas, rode it by your house and now you are sad because you aren't the special kid with the bike any more, you are just regular kid like your neighbor.

Jesus that's brutal. Accurate. But I feel attacked ;p

Yeah, if you studied and mastered all of the various disciplines required for fabricating a bicycle, and then fabricated your own by hand and offered to do likewise for others, sometimes in exchange for compensation, sometimes for free (provided others could use the bike), only for some machine that mass produces bikes to (informal) spec that was built by studying all of the designs you used for the bikes you made to suddenly become widely and cheaply available.

Yeah, and that machine that replaces you was built by engineers.

We can dish it out, but we can’t take it.

No, both bikes are owned by a $trillion corporation who collects a monthly rent.

Using physical analogs for virtual things is not the best choice, for example: Would you give a copy of your bike, or copy of your food to your poor neighbor kid if you could copy it as easily and as cheaply as digital products?

Actually he would be very wise, for he then has a bike and can ride it or sell it for money. You have to learn capitalist thinking to succeed in this economy.

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