While I'm harping on this, I should say that the textbook definition of "commodity fetishism" absolutely and totally applies to the aphorism "information wants to be free" It's the exact equivalent of saying shit like "wages want to be low"
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If you weren't engaging in fetishism (in the old timey non-sexual sense, of anthropomorphizing an abstract concept and treating it like a person) you would just say "People want information for free" Which is obviously true and vacuous
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And, fun fact, the original version of "information wants to be free" was Stewart Brand *pairing* it with "information wants to be expensive"
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(Much like everyone forgets that von Clausewitz paired "War is diplomacy continued by other means" with "War is a fistfight continued by other means", i.e. war is fought for BOTH high-minded and petty reasons)
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But yeah, "information wants to be free" and its price trends down to zero if you just "let it" Just like wages want to be low, rent wants to rise and jobs want to have high turnover and be entry-level
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Information also wants to be expensive, it's fickle like that, the ways it expresses displeasure with being made free are just delayed You give information freedom by plastering it all over social media with no attribution/compensation, and it starts lying to you all the time
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Replying to @arthur_affect
To be fair, though, our expensive information sources haven’t proven especially reliable when it comes to the truth. (I suppose you could argue this is a byproduct of the saturation of unreliable free information, but I’m not sure.)
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Replying to @ShrimpMeatMom @arthur_affect
dacid glee sloth Retweeted Arthur Chu
I think your point here is very wise as a counterpoint, even if this is a natural progression of capitalism. https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1245151237571358720?s=21 …https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1245151237571358720 …
dacid glee sloth added,
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Replying to @ShrimpMeatMom
I think the digitization of culture and the constant driving of the market price of artistic labor down to zero is obviously just a logical progression of late capitalism and am baffled by people convinced it's a blow of resistance to capitalism that will be its downfall
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ShrimpMeatMom
It's like all the smallholders being forced off their land so the industrialist can build a factory and people going "Well the number of landowners has gone down from 25 to 1 so tenants are winning"
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It's like saying "Well before Wal-Mart came to town everything was two or three bucks more expensive, and now it costs less so capitalists must be making less money and the working class is being empowered Comrade Sam Walton"
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