On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Michael H Goldhaber <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:michael@goldhaber.org">michael@goldhaber.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div style="">Christopher, I find your thoughts about recursive publics fascinating. But one thing I do not understand is the meaning of the quote of you by Jodi Dean to the effect that the so-called geeks are trying to "save capitalism from capitalists;" can you explain what this means? Are not capitalists integral to capitalism? Is it not essentially a hierarchical system in which reinvestment decisions are made by a small group? (I assume that capitalism without capitalists would not be synonymous with anything like "state capitalism" which is how many socialists have described the Soviet Union.) Perhaps you could point to a text where you explain this.</div>
</blockquote><div><br>Chapter 2 of Two Bits (<a href="http://twobits.net/discuss/chapter2/16">http://twobits.net/discuss/chapter2/16</a>) comes closest to explaining this by way of making some distinctions amongst geeks. Many geeks (by no means all of them) are committed to capitalism as the best of all possible worlds, but they also want to criticize what passes for (or what is called) capitalism today as a corrupt, inadequate or fallen version of their ideal. A more precise way to put it is that they are opposed to unregulated, special interest-driven, monopoly capitalism of the sort we find in the IT industry today (as well as other sectors), and they would rather see a capitalism of small producers competing fairly to out-innovate each other. I would venture to say, however, that few of them would trust the current political establishment, especially the US government, to regulate that system, and that is why the "recursive public" makes a certain amount of sense as a distributed form of regulation of competition, or as I call it in the book, a dream of a 'self-leveling' level playing field.<br>
<br></div></div>ck<br>