Comments on: "Money Ruins Everything" (Innovation/Intellectual Property Edition)

By: Juan

Juan — Tue, 20 May 2008 07:30:00 +0000

Commodification, or the transforming of all production into production for exchange within a legal-political regime of private property, is also a hidden_from-view socialization. The commodity* relation is a social relation.

I sense the authors are trying to deal with the contradiction inherent to this and beginning to recognize that the one-sidedness of price (exchange value) has limits beyond which the more strictly social gains weight.
I want to use the term ‘gift economy’ but am not sure that it applies, nevertheless the system’s overcoming begins within itself.

By: macndub

macndub — Tue, 20 May 2008 03:45:00 +0000

You are right on Tyndale, Yves. It's easy to call an unauthorized translation, "bad," but clearly the conventional notion of property rights cannot apply to the foundation of a religion.

Which segues nicely into my point.

Capitalist societies see innovation as dependent on exclusive property interests. We assume that it is necessary to propertize intellectual activity if we wish to spur creativity or inventiveness.

Economists describe innovation this way, but I'm not sure that this description is complete. Drucker, for one (there may be others) finds that the most important form of innovation is business models, not technologies and not patents.

Pulitzer's synthesis of the cheap newspaper (relying on the telegraph but as a customer, not an owner) supported by the innovation of advertising created modern news distribution. The important point is that created value must be captured somehow, or nobody will do it.

Value isn't always monetary, of course, but volunteerism is the luxury of the rich. Most people need to work, and it's the job of business to provide socially meaningful, value creating work.

This means that business must innovate on two axis--value creation, and value capture.

Of course, many bloggers create value without capturing much. This may be the new paradigm for content creation and distribution (Pulitzer is disintermediated and can't afford his lifestyle any longer). Or it may be that Google's rent capture is unsustainably stifling innovation in, forgive the expression, new media. Long story short, blogging will have to become a reasonable source of income for those who engage in it full time (not as a hobby), because the social importance is just too great.

By: Yves Smith

Yves Smith — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:34:00 +0000

tz,

Historian William Manchester, in a quote provided earlier by an anonymous reader, disagrees with your interpretation both of the nature of Tyndale's offense and the quality of his translation. It is, as Manchester points out, the foundation for the King James Bible. I would also point out that the Catholic church, or those who are defenders of its official positions, are not objective sources on this matter.

In the 16th century the Church didn't want--didn't permit--wide readership of the New Testament. As William Manchester pointed out in "A World Lit Only by Fire": "Studying it was a privilege they had reserved for the hierarchy, which could then interpret passages to support the sophistry, and often the secular politics, of the Holy See."

"William Tyndale conceived a translation of the New Testament while reading ancient languages at Oxford and Cambridge. And being the humanist that he was, was adamant about its publication. A Catholic friend reproached him: 'It would be better to be without God's law than the pope's.' Tyndale replied: 'If God spare me, ere many years I will cause the boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than you do.'

"Tyndale had been warned that finding a printer for his completed manuscript would be difficult. Luckless in England, he crossed the Channel and found a publisher in Catholic Cologne. The text had been set and was on the stone when a local dean head of it, grasped the implications, and persuaded authorities in Cologne to pi the type. Fleeing with his manuscript, Tyndale found that he was now a plice figure; had post offices existed, his picture would have been posted in them. The Frankfurt dean sent word of his criminal attempt to Cardinal Wolsey and King Henry, who declared Tyndale a felon. Sentries were posted at all English ports, under orders to seize him upon his return home.

"But the fugitive was less interested in his personal freedom than in seeing his work in print. He therefore journeyed to Protestant Worms, where, in 1525, Peter Schoffer published an octavo edition of his work. Six thousand copies had been shipped to England when Tynsdale was again spotted. He was on teh run for the next four years. Then, believing himself safe, he settled in Antwerp. However, he had underestimated the gravity of his offense and the persistence of his sovereign. British agents had never ceased stalking him. Now they arrested him. At Henry's (VIII) insistence he was imprisoned for sixteen months in the castle of Vilvorde, near Brussels, tried for heresy, and, after his conviction, publicly garrotted. His corpse was burned at the stake, an admonition for any who might have been tempted by his folly.

"The royal warning was unheeded. You can't kill a good book, including the Good Book, and Tyndale's translation was excellent, later it became the basis for the King James version. Despite a lengthy "Dialogue" by Siur Thomas More, denouncing the translation as flawed, copies of the Wroms edition had been smuggled into the country and were being passed from hand to hand. To the bishop of London this was an intolerable, metastasizing heresy. He bought up all that were for sale and publicly burned them at st Paul's Cross. But the archbishop of Canterbury was dissatisfied; his spies told him that many remained in private hands. Protestant peers with country houses were loaning them out, like public libraries. Assembling his bishops, the archbishop declared that tracking them down was essential--each was placing soulds in jeopardy--and so, on his instructions, dioceses organized posses, searching the homes of known literates, and offered rewards to informers--sending out the alarm to keep Christ's revealed word from those who worshiped him."

By: tz

tz — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:40:00 +0000

Tyndale was NOT executed for publishing the bible, it was for Heresy. As usual, the story is a bit more subtle, but it is easier to repeat historic libels.

http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2002/0212fea3.asp

And libel is what it is about. It was an unauthorized (and thus bad) translation. Were I to translate your blog posts badly to make you appear a fool or fraud, you would probably go to court against me.

Also note at this time, the reformation was going on, so it would not begin and end with some private english version of the Bible, but cause a lot of infighting, and possibly wars so it was not a simple matter of expression when everyone was looking for an excuse to begin a war. Nor have things changed much.

Our country had the alien and sedition act just after its founding, and even now the “patriot act” worries some about if what they publish gives advice to terrorists.

Jose Padilla was convicted on the contents of a few tapped private phone calls for very indirect mentions – conspiring in a conspiracy, not for anything overt.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:19:00 +0000

The article you cite is derivative of the established “democratizing innovation” idea. See http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm as the prime example. There is an HBR article somewhere out there as well.