The Simple Economics of Open Source

[Robin Becker]

In article <14837CB4E98A72FE.8FD547BA6E928594.5A103CFE68327EB7 at lp.airnew
s.net>, Tres Seaver <tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com> writes
...
>"That dog won't hunt!"  Your claim that "basically no one makes the
>effort" is easily refuted:  consider the League of Women Voters,
>and the guides they put out before each election -- that effort is
>well-organized, and involves coordinated, non-partisan effort on the
>scale of tens of thousands of volunteers (much like a large Open Source
>project).  The League's explicit motive is to educate themselves and
>the population at large on the issues and candidates;  that at least
>some of the effort here is altruistic is obvious to anyone who hasn't
>"internalized [economics'] assumptions."
>
>Altruism-is-a-shibboleth'ly,
>
>Tres.
I don't think the pessimists amongst whom I count myself reject altruism
totally. A purely altruistic action has benefit for others and none for
the actor. Very few of the altruistic examples in the thread come close.

A lot of claims are made, but few are verifiable. I think the
internalized utility assumptions are a bit spurious as there is evidence
that many of the assumptions that economists make (about human
behaviour) are not verifiable and in some cases have been shown to be
true; a classic example is the assumption of risk averse behaviour in
investment decisions. I feel that the assumption that economic agents
(people) always behave as though they have a well defined utility is
false. I think that what economists are really saying is that they have
a model where the 'average' agent has such a utility and that the model
gives good results for certain problems. In this sense the average
volunteer feels they behave in a non-partisan altruistic way, but the
ensemble actually behaves selfishly although this is not selfishness in
the way we normally think of it. 
-- 
Robin Becker