Alejandro@Oxford

Just bumped into Cory Doctorow’s review of Chris Anderson’s Free book (I know it was published on The Guardian netaaaages ago i.e. July 28). The core of his review…

There’s plenty in our world that lives outside of the marketplace: it’s a rare family that uses spot-auctions to determine the dinner menu or where to go for holidays. Who gets which chair and desk at your office is more likely to be determined on the lines of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” than on the basis of the infallible wisdom of the marketplace. The internally socialistic, externally capitalistic character of most of our institutions tells us that there’s something to the idea that markets may not be the solution to all our problems [...] for the sizeable fraction of this material – and it is sizeable – that was created with no expectation of joining the monetary economy, with no expectation of winning some future benefit for its author, that was created for joy, or love, or compulsion, or conversation, it is just wrong to say that the “price” of the material is “free”.”