The metaphor of "producers and consumers" is inadequate for today's reality.
> ...promote active cooperation to reduce the overall competition/privatization in society.
David Graeber's ideas (memes) have truly infected me.
"The purpose of universities is to produce scholarship."
Facepalm slap. Like "duh", right?
Exposes the folly of higher ed's current focus on credentialing, for profit.
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Another meme:
Graeber also points out that in our "service economy", much of the actual work being done, needing to be done, is "caring work" (vs "service work").
A distinct type of labor ignored by our current economic accounting rules.
Much of FOSS is something like "caring work", right?
Sure some people profit from the products and services. Which I have no problem with.
But there's a lot of really important work that just needs to be done. Just one recent example was OpenSSL.
Our Freedom Markets™, those magical invisible hands of the marketplace, haven't figured out how to incentivize and reward and sustain the efforts of maintaining the commons.