Re: Newsweek Article, PLUG, & Open Source

[Rebecca Ore <rebecca.ore@op.net>]

On Tue, Jan 12, 1999 at 01:07:43AM -0500, John A. Simkiss III wrote:
> (One wonders how a gift culture can exist for an extended period of time. Those ecosystems that would foster the gift culture, i.e. the richest communities are the most subject to a phenomenon that tends to equalize relative wealth among cultures of various levels of wealth: reproduction. In those natural systems which have the most resources available to its population, reproduction, followed by rapid population growth tends to lower the wealth of the average member to a level similar to that in ecosystems of average or even below average resources. In fact, such rich environments often lead to population explosions creating an ecosystem rather low in average wealth, which leads to a population implosion).
> 

The NorthWest Indian cultures that had the potlatch were in salmon run
areas -- so the abundances were cyclic.  These were also slave-owning
societies, if I remember my antho classes correctly, which also follows
the cyclically abundance.  Gather all you can (with your slaves), dry
the salmon, and then, if you have a surplus, which you won't be able to
calculate until after the salmon run, you give it away (because if a
fellow chief has starving slaves, this may destablize the tribe).

My anthro teacher said that what we have about potlatch are a few 19th
Century accounts which have been extensively studied in the 20th Century
(needless to say, when the US and Canadians took over these areas,
slavery was abolished -- kinda curious if slave-owning societies in
general are noted for hospitality and charity).  He said that some of
the accounts may simply reflect insanity among some individual chiefs.

It didn't appear that potlach survived the disappearance of slavery, as
far as I can remember.  Salmon runs are a bit less reliable these days,
too.  But those were cultures of cyclical, not permanent abundance.  The
impression I had was that no living anthropologist had seen a potlatch,
but all were attempting to analyze the 19th Century accounts.

Anthro class was at Columbia University, FWTW.

Eric's description of adverse possession didn't match what I was taught
in real estate license class, either.  If the owner gives you
permission, you can squat on the land all you want, but you can't take
title ever.  The adverse is that you openly and defiantly use the
property without permission of the title holder.  The custom sort of
peaks in Honduras, where, according to a friend of mine, if you can't
keep squatters off your property, it ain't your property anymore if the
squatter start paying taxes on it.  Same holds if your Honduran
land-owning partner pays the taxes in just his name.  It's not called
*adverse* possession for nothing.  MS seems to have used this way of
acquiring title in the past, no?

Adverse possesion was a way of reclaiming abandoned lands where the
landowner wasn't paying attention enough to them to notice that you'd
put in a double wide.  You were under no obligation to find the frigging
landowner.  It was up to him to notice you were there, or not.

Mores of the Open Source community are much more civilized :).


-- 
Rebecca Ore
Creativity is playing with the rule sets

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