Peter Swire (talking about Yochai Benkler's "Wealth of Networks").

Overview:  doing a project re how internet changes "consumer protection," and it morphed.  These words "consumer" and "producers" are economic words.  Two critiques:  why claimed shift from market to nonmarket is overstated.  Why an economics-based alternative is pragmatically useful.

People here are cheering for Yochai's vision.  And that's all good.  But I read the book and I have some thoughts.

Here's outline:  Your laptop is a personal mainframe.  About the processing power of 10 years ago that was in a mainframe.  We own an information age factory. Consumer is an owner of the means of production, which is "economic" language.

Linked to a global distribution network.  So if we use words "consumer" and "producers" opposites converge.

Consumer protection law -- changes all kinds of legal regimes.  

What party cares about consumers -- Democrats.  What party cares about small business?  Republicans.  But both are becoming the same.

Link to wealth of networks -- shift to "non-market" he'll poke at:

Social production -- increases relative efficiency of non-market production.  Benkler rests his argument on a shift to social away from proprietary and market.  Swire doesn't think shift to nonmarket is proven, and he suggests we'd want to deploy an economics-based approach.

I think nonmarket is defined too broadly.  IBM and others investing billions in open source.  And there's been a big source to market with these things.

Second:  This book was about startup phase of Web 2.0.  Early adopters are passionate people.  As niche grows, then division of labor, and paid professionals show up.

Domain names:  Used to be Jon Postel.  Now ICANN.  And bug hunters expect to get paid.

PR etc. going to wikis etc.

The internet:  from non-commmercial (1993) to commerce (today).  Certainly commercial.

Third point:  economist would agree that costs have gone way down, supply curves going up, more production happening.  We expect a lot of market things to follow from this!  

Even if you don't agree that the shift has happened, here's a way to think about this.  An exciting transformation, but market is an alternative description of what we're seeing.

Technological exceptionalism is a dificult claim.  Change in technology hasn't shifted us to nonmarket relationships.
That's contestable.  And complicated.  Simpler to say usual market view that reduction in cost leads to expansion in supply.

Third:  Pragmadics:  what audiences matter.  You should care about policymakers and people in business, who are market involved.  We want to have a persuasive market-based way to get to the outcome.

I do agree that exciting things are happening online, but shift to nonmarket is overstated and we need economics-based rhetoric to convince people.

Benkler:  This isn't inconsistent with what I've been saying, just means you're functioning through a system other than price system to allocate effort.  What's that system?

To use a system that is not directed (direction, intensity) by price system, and call that "market," you're using "market" as a metaphor and a security blanket.  

My claim is that price mechanism occupies a smaller portion of the totality of motivations in the world.  Whether you're a business or another actor, that should matter; you need to accept a distinct system of motivations and symbols that is outside the price system.

And to claim that I'm not using economics in this book is surprising.

Second, this idea of Occam's Razor.  To say when you change cost to economically significant actions affects production -- that's NOT technological exceptionalism.

Yes, costs matter, human capital and physical capital etc. all matter -- this one component has changed dramatically, the cost of production.  This decline has declined in such a way that a whole set of behaviors are BECOMING the economy.

When I talk about "nonmarket," I'm interested in freedom and justice; having a diverse set of motivations is what gives us change in these domains.

Swire:  Yochai is clarifying what I understood of his book.  But I'm still right that we're moving from hobbyist to professionalism.  So we shouldn't wonder at Web 2.0.

Benkler:  If this happens, is it a natural organic move or because a consequence of policy.  Look at 1920s amateur radio hobbyists.  Hoover cooperated with big industry to move them off spectrum and prioritize big transmitters.  And moving DNS from Postel to ICANN wasn't necessary or inevitable -- it was a policy decision and it was a mistake.  So commercialization "natural" and we should push policy towards it, or an output?  I suggest we need to direct policy in the other direction.  There's no reason to think a "natural" progression.

Swire:  Stick with DNS.  As economic importance of root servers increased for commerce, a level of "assurance" and low tolerance of risk came in.  So we tend to pay people who are going to promise performance.  To think that companies will do it as volunteers is not realistic or appropriate.  It would be surprising to have DNS run by individuals doing on a non-paid basis. 

Isenberg:  Thanks.