Sharing as an Economic Model
Sunday, March 6th, 2005In the February 5-11 edition of The Economist, the Economics Focus column discusses a recent paper in the Yale Law Journal by Yochnai Benkler titled “Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production” (available in PDF).
The first question, puzzling to practitioners of the dismal science, is why people - specifically open-source programmers - freely give away the products of their effort done outside of their employment hours. Where’s the “Rational Actor”? Where’s “Self-Interest”? Where’s the pay-back?
The “pure economic” theories tend to run along the lines of subtle pay-back: reputation and prestige leading to greater job prospects. The “social economic” theories talk about communities of reciprocity and trust that benefit all members. (The “geek economics” theories say: “What else would I do with my Friday night?” and “Dude, I need to WiFi my toaster.”)
And then there are characteristics of the computing field itself that influence this economic motivation: (more…)

Over the soundtrack, we hear a low, ominous growl (Oi the Beagle doesn’t really have a low, ominous growl in her vocal repertoire - she has a kind of chain-saw rrrRRRrrrYIP! sound she saves for the seagulls that land on our skylight - but, hey, it’s my dream.)