? ... financial incentives is the motivation for most labor.
Thus widespread availability of "labor of love" open source software, and the relative crappiness of a lot of commercial software.
If I didn't require an income to cover a family of five, I would be retired, and doing whatever it is that I love at any moment. But instead, I work for a living, for money, to meet our needs.
The pool of people who are capable of collecting garbage is non-scarce, so the price for labor is relatively small compared to the social value it produces.
Advertising is so well rewarded because the attention of consumers is a very scarce resource, so companies put massive amounts of money into capturing some of that.
And public institutions may serve a useful function, but again seem to be mostly about civil service powerbroking and providing extremely safe employment.
There are certainly (often larger) nonprofits with a tendency of overpaying their leadership and/or pushing policies favored by their corporate funders. I would in this context however not conflate "most visible" (ie largest advertising budgets) with "most". Most nonprofits I have worked with are ran and operated by hardworking people on minimal budgets.
There is not much difference between China and western countries. Sure, China is a bit more oppressive (understatement of the year), but they both have element of capitalism and a huge set of coercitive and authoritarian laws which err on socialism.
In other words, "communism" is an authoritarian/dictatorial political system that masquerades as an economic system until it doesn't have to put up with any dissent, at which point it goes back to "capitalism." (State or Party or whatever. I think they call their version "with chinese characteristics" in the west.)
I'm not making a fundamental judgement on this, all laws are coercive in some sense, capitalist systems often have redistributive features, taxes and such.
However redistribution in the extreme and complete sense in communism is often characterised in utopian terms. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. That's a fine sentiment, but it entails an awful lot of systematic and thorough coercion, and the virtual elimination of freedom in the distribution and use of capital, or in fact property or resources of any kind. This is why we keep getting the "no true scotsman" complaint that criticisms of communism are invalid because they are never 'real' communism. That doesn't account for the coercive and prescriptive nature of a thoroughgoing redistributive system run by a bureaucratic elite. Since they need the authority to redistribute all resources, they need effectively unlimited power. That's why they keep ending up becoming so corrupt.
To the extent that socialist systems retain any freedom in the use, exchange and accumulation of money, they become correspondingly capitalist. Hence communism with 'Chinese' (read capitalist) characteristics.
Most countries I can think of implement a mix of capitalism and socialism. Some features are capitalism, some are features of socialism.
Coercion and taxation are not capitalism, taxation is just theft operated by the state.
I consider the "no true scotsman" argument for communism to be valid: we never arrived to real communism and that's because it's impossible.
Communism can be achieved only if all the individuals of society are perfect; without that perfection the best you can achieve is a socialist dictatorship.
On the opposite (anarcho-capitalist) side, I think we should try to get rid of all our society socialist features and see if the free market can support us entirely. In my opinion, capitalism is not bad, we just don't have enough.
I agree communism is impossible, that's why I think no true scotsman is an invalid criticism. My post was largely an attempt to explain why I think it's impossible and also actually undesirable. That's all just semantics though, I think we agree on the actual issue.
I disagree with your last paragraph. I oppose socialism as an ideology, as it is pursued by dyed in the wool socialists, but don't necessarily oppose all policies implemented in the name of socialism. I oppose ideologies generally, politically I support policies that have turned out to work, whatever the reasons might be.
For example I do believe in the power of free markets and that capitalism is essentially based on individual liberty. However for example here in the UK we have a very effective and beloved national health service. It's not perfect and might not be the system I would choose from scratch, with unlimited power to make it as I wished, but it works and I would oppose any attempts to radically reform it. There's just too much that's good about it that we could break. Maggie, one of my political heroes, tried to reform it along market lines in the 80s and it was disastrous.
But then there are historical reasons why Britain has some of it's economic and political settlements. Social consensus is important and what works for us might not work for others with different traditions, institutions and expectations.
Gatekeeping may be a feature or a bug depending on your opinion, but we don't all have to have the same priorities for our software repos, because we can each choose which repos we use.
So you ratchet up the friction for entry, that helps devs?
Say what you want about the app store, but across all the devs for iOS, how many would go through the trouble of self distributing their product? Marketing, infrastructure, payment system etc... ? The app store is a tremendously low friction way for market penetration.
Sure, we may need to calibrate the revenue sharing arrangement. However the "merge your software into the repo" as an either/or alternative is laughable.
The plain truth of the matter is that commercial app stores are malware distributors, and community repositories are not. The commercial app store model does not work, at least not for the user.
Also: not all software is commercial, and not everyone wants their phones commercialized. Your business model is often simply not welcome on the platform. You're not entitled to make money. If we want a platform without commercial software incentives, that's our business, not yours.
Citation needed.
> The commercial app store model does not work, at least not for the user.
The hundred of millions of Google Play users would like to have a word with you. (rampant ad-tech and freeware model are a function of the "race to the bottom" in app pricing, conditioning users to trade privacy for free apps, and Google's existence as an advertiser, not the fact that the Google Play store is commercial)
> Also: not all software is commercial, and not everyone wants their phones commercialized.
You can, uh, have an app store that distributes both commercial and non-commercial apps. In particular, there's a lot of open-source stuff on Google Play (and probably on the Apple App Store too).
> Your business model is often simply not welcome on the platform.
What platform? Who's not "welcoming"? The Pinephone runs open-source software.
> If we want a platform without commercial software incentives, that's our business, not yours.
Again, what platform? Who's "we"? The users? I'm a user, and I want commercial incentives - what makes your desires more important than mine?
Only a authoritarian, selfish mindset rejects a feature (commercial software) that is desired by some fraction of the user population, is useful, and is compatible with alternative features (open-source software) for a poor, vague reason like "commercialization".
Or does your definition of "software freedom" sound like "you can run anything you want on your computer...except for "proprietary" programs (which we get to define), or those that "enable" proprietary programs"?
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=flashlight
Click through some of these and see what permissions they ask for. Full network access, run at startup, view network connections, GPS location, read contacts, read the SD card, ads, microtransactions, the list of offenses goes on and on. All to do exactly one thing: call this function:
https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/camera/core...
This is malware, and the services which distribute it are malware distributors.
>Only a authoritarian, selfish mindset rejects a feature (commercial software) that is desired by some fraction of the user population
Only a shmuck or an abuser thinks that it's okay to exploit user's ignorance of the alternatives to monetize their every waking breath and steal as much information about them as possible through deceit and propaganda. Prohibiting the exploitation of the public is not authoritarian, even if it means you don't make as much money.
Malware has been distributed through open-source repositories multiple times before, so by your convoluted definition of "malware distributors", open-source repositories are those, too.
> Only a shmuck or an abuser thinks that it's okay to exploit user's ignorance of the alternatives
As stated elsewhere in this thread[1], not all users use these commercial stores out of ignorance of alternatives. In addition to being a logically poor argument, it's empirically false. Moreover, the word "exploit" is divorced from reality and not applicable to the situation - giving users the choice to have commercial app stores available is clearly not exploitation from any sane viewpoint. I'm calling you out - you're using logical fallacies and emotionally-laden weasel words to try to sneak a bad argument in.
> to monetize their every waking breath and steal as much information about them as possible through deceit and propaganda.
Snuck premise: "commercial app stores all monetize and surveil their users to the maximum extent possible". There's absolutely nothing intrinsic to a commercial app store that causes any of that to happen. But go ahead, prove me wrong - show me that every commercial app store has to do this. I suggest starting with Steam, and showing me the massive amount of data-collection that you clearly think they do on their users.
> Prohibiting the exploitation of the public is not authoritarian, even if it means you don't make as much money.
Same snuck premise - show me exactly how the nature of a proprietary app store makes "exploitation" necessary - after defining "exploitation". And independent of that, your argument is still false. Trying to claim that you're "prohibiting the exploitation of the public" attempts to cover over the fact that your proposed "solution" is authoritarian (the motive has absolutely nothing to do with that categorization).
While your statement is technically correct, the number of users falling into that category, and would go the extra effort to ensure a non-commercialized day to day phone is usable, is infinitesimally small. Most users embrace the convenience associated with the commercial solution.
This will be a tiny niche phone
If I buy a phone from you, and then download an app that bricks it, I want my money back from you.
Yes, you can argue that I'm responsible for that, but consumer protection laws will apply, and there's going to be a court case, possibly even a class action suit. Too many uneducated users who refuse to take personal responsibility for their actions. Yes, it's not ideal, but this is how people are.
Your response has at some point got to include vetting the software that your users can download onto their phone, for purely financial reasons.
If I buy a laptop, and then install Linux on it, and download a malicious package and install it, then that's on me. If someone buys a Dell laptop and downloads a malicious application and installs it, then Dell support gets to deal with that problem. After a while, Dell is going to install some software by default to help with this, and spy on what users have been doing purely so that if they mess up then Dell can help. Eventually this happens enough and Windows gets an app store, and fairly soon after a version of Windows that can only install apps via the app store.
This is not about control for control's sake, or revenue (except saving support costs). This is about protecting people from themselves.
But sure, if Pine can put a big sticker on the phone saying "do not install anything on this phone" and make that legally binding, then they won't need an app store.
App distributiors are distributing malware. The vendors and the app developers are spying on you because it's profitable to sell your data. They keep walled gardens so that they get their 30% cut of every transaction. They are doing it in the service of their financial interests, which also motivates everything else they do.
The idea that they're doing it out of some kind of charitable desire to keep the user's phone working is ridiculous.
Yes. So what?
I will be more direct for your benefit.
Not only are you wrong. You’re wrong on a scale so large, 100 years ago the average person had never thought of numbers that high.
Not only is the commercial App Store system working for users, it’s working for billions of them. Billions of humans are cool with it.
Your “open App Store” concept works for so few people, as to hardly be compared in the same breath.
Now, the more general argument about the "commercial app store model not working" is utterly ridiculous - you can't make any useful generalizations with a sample size of 2. (actually, Steam seems to be doing pretty well - I rarely hear people complaining about it, and it's a commercial app store)
> Not only are you wrong. You’re wrong on a scale so large, 100 years ago the average person had never thought of numbers that high.
...is an amazing comeback, that I will be taking.
Are Google and Apple's implementations of the concept bad? Yes. But it's not very difficult to separate out the traits of the implementations with the traits of the idea. Steam seems to be doing very well, and as a user of that platform, they are executing it pretty well.
Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension before trying to speak for others.
My argument boils down to "Perfect is the enemy of good"
Are you smoking crack?