Gratuity and Gratitude as Game Changers

"We all can win" by Frits Ahlefeldt - 
Laurvig under Creative Common License

The author of the picture you see here (among many other artists who are doing the same) might have something important to teach us: this artist has a good deal of quality artwork published in Flickr under Creative Commons License. This is how I see a more fair model of market economy: when we find individuals like Frits who selflessly share their talent, we should embed their work into ours and distribute it all around (of course we are the first beneficiary of this sharing activity) but at the same time we act as promotional agents spreading the word through social networks or even graphics or television media (whatever is available to us). Maybe the fundamental point is taking good care of making the due authorship attributions (I even put links to their websites so that their authorship is better guaranteed). Ideally at some point we can create a critical mass of demand for the author who can now continue with its share of selfless work but also gain an increased number of royalties by doing other works of different magnitude or nature. It is a model that can be applied to literature, music and not only art but also many other markets. The rule of gratuity combined with the rule of gratitude can produce profound changes in the way we exchange goods and services.

Open Source and Democracy

Picture by Scott Pakulski under Creative Commons License

I was researching a topic that fascinates me: the changes produced by what is called the Open Source Paradigm and I came across this Ted Talk (find link below) that impressed me deeply because, among other things I'm an Argentinian and I'm specially worried about the political model of my country. I was deeply surprised when, in the middle of the talk, shows up an Argentinian lady named Pia who proposes to extrapolate the Open Source concept into politics in order to achieve some sort of Greek democracy, where citizens can vote straight forward the laws that are discussed at the representatives chamber by means of an App. Last year Pia has founded her own political party called: "The party in the Net." (I imagine that they don't rely on big sums of many to found their party so I encourage my fellow compatriots to investigate this new party's platform, what they are doing, etc and spread through social networks or other means if available, should they think that this proposal is viable and can be an alternative for positive change in our country). Personally, after listening to this Ted Talk I don't think that Pia is dreaming of Utopia (though I can easily sense that some adjustments must be needed) You might say that poor Argentinian people don't have usually access to computers. However, if the country continues the path it's following now, soon people will have to spend days buying basic supplies as it occurs now in Venezuela. Instead they can sit a couple of hours a day in the computer parlor whenever it's subjected to consideration the continuation of their own assistance plan. May even participate in the debate and, if not, the representative of "Party in the Net" will be required to compute their vote as if every one of the resolutions that there they passed were a referendum. Here the talk: Listen Now: Open Source World