Two additional thoughts have rattled around the brain about economic models. One rattle is about personhood. The other is about ownership.

Underlying a lot of the discussion about Internet commerce is the notion of emergence whereby the small moves and limited information available to individual elements aggregates into a sophisticated organizational structure. The prototype emergent organization is the ant colony. Current theory holds that colonies self-organize based on the concentration of pheromone trails excreted by colony members and by the magnitude in space and time of modes of work. Strong trails lead directly to food. Too many workers around right now, and some switch to garbage duty. The Internet is seen by many as a tool to enhance such self-organization in human communities. Many of the models for music downloading build, to one degree or another, on a structure of emergent self-organization.

Here in the US, this leads to a problem, to wit: what is an individual? Legally, corporations are persons. This government regulation colors our economic model. So, if the discussion is about the emergence of people, we've got to take into account that there are two kinds of persons and that the influence and behavior of the corporate person is decidedly different from the influence and behavior of the individual person.

The other idea is about ownership. An article by James deLong discusses that the motivations for participating in open source software projects lead to a weak economic model. I think he misses on two points. One is that he bases his writing on assumptions, not on research. A First Monday article clearly
points out that the choice of open source model is made on sound economic principles. The second is that he treats the developers as economic morons who don't understand the supporting role of government funding and academic research in their projects. He ends up sounding like he doesn't understand the essential role of such funding and research in economic progress. Such are the blinders of a market-only model.

But deLong's article pinged something in my head, and that's the idea of owning something. The perversity of digital ownership these days, particularly in software, is that if I "buy" software from a proprietary vendor, I don't really own anything. What I purchased is a license to use the software. I am severely limited in the way that I can dispose of my "property". I can't resell it. In many cases, I can't even transfer it. And I certainly can't hack into it. However, if I pick up some open source software, I have something. I can give it away. I can transfer it. I can use it how I like. I can customize it with candy apple stripes, if I want. I own it.

It's the difference between renting a car and owning a car; we all know which one gets better care. It seems those moron developers might be doing something more tangible for the market consumer than the capitalist corporations. Which loops me back to personhood.