Symbiosis in LSs LO11175

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Thu, 28 Nov 1996 05:59:14 -0500 (EST)

Replying to LO11155 --

> Ben Compton wrote in LO11119:
> .... But I have a small and rather complex enterprise on the sideline
> in which I have learnt many lessons, including the basic lesson of all
> enterprises: one has to make a fair financial profit to keep it going. If
> profit making fails to emerge on Internet, then this wonderful medium is
> doomed to mediocrasy, despite all the hype and extacy now.

There is a role for the profit motive in the ordinary course of trande
and commerce. Nevertheless, this role has been vastly over rated by the
business propaganda system, particularly with regard to applications in
the field of telecommunications.

The profit motive did not build the Internet, which was one of the great
success stories of contemporary civilization. Moreover, with the advent
of radical privatization instituted by the Clinton Administration a course
has been set leading toward "an intellectual and cultural disaster" in
cyberspace, as recently observed in an interview with Yale professor David
Gelernter, author of Mirror Worlds (1991), published online in the
inaugural issue of Howard Rheingold's Electric Minds, Nov 11, 1996.

Instead of continuing that proven cycle of failure the American people
should be building a publicly supported, democratic Global Information
Infrastructure (dGII), governed by the values of economic prosperity,
social equity, and ecological integrity as mutually reinforcing goals. The
ethic of "free market" capitalism focused on profit maximization will only
disregard those values, which are essential to the well being of the
people and survival of the Planet Earth.

The next great leap forward is possible only by overcoming the
self-imposed constraints of the broadly perpetrated fictions of "free
market" capitalism. Surely this forum, to advance the notion of learning
organizations, should have learned that basic lesson.

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
[Browse Fins Information Age Library at the inforM system
of the University of Maryland: HTTP://www.inform.umd.edu:
8080/EdRes/Topic/CompResource/CompSoc/FINS/]
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dGII Now! democratic Global Information Infrastructure
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-- 

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>