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Comment by CabSauce | Hacker News Reader

  In economics, ... but the power of cooperation seems to be valued much less

I'm not sure that I agree with this. The creation of firms and trade are both cooperative. They aren't altruistic though. (I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, just that cooperation isn't valued in economics.)

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Agreed - partnerships abound in the real business world. It might be under-modeled in economic theory and not well taught in business school, but the value of networking is and having high-level industry relationships is the life-blood of a good business leader - specifically because of partnering and information sharing.

If anything economics seems like the smarter field when compared to the open source community because the focus is on resource evaluation, allocation, and returns. Open source could probably use more talent but the missing lynchpin is obviously a reward structure. The techno-optimism of the 80s and 90s doesn't scale, we need licensing structures that entitle the parties doing the unprofitable stuff to a share of the profits their work produces. Resisting commercialization has weakened the community not made it stronger, open source can still be free without being free labor.

If you think there's no reward structure, perhaps it's because you can't see it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

It’s the lifeblood of the leader, but not the firm.

A good percentage of being a good leader is being able to pick up the phone and get stuff done, which is often contrary to what the firm wants.

It’s not cooperation at the human level, and that makes all the difference. “Altruism” is a convenient dismissal of a principle (survival through cooperation) that has actually allowed humanity to survive and thrive thus far.

The trick to making it all work is that knowledge and/or tooling (the means of production) ought not be proprietary, but product or service absolutely can be.

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