(Broke my original post into 3 for the
taggers <img src="images/icons/icon7.gif" alt=":-)" border=0 align='absmiddle'> )

&gt;When communities open themselves up to
&gt;sharing their resources with the world at
&gt;large, they also open themselves up to
&gt;exploitation by special interests.

I think it's important to recognize and
"think through" the false boundaries that
basically serve the interests of those
"special interests." As Chomsky says,
special interests in the government's view
means the population at large. They divide
up the people into women, workers, asians,
first nations, etc, then call them "special
interests" when they try to reverse that
categorization by demanding to be "people."

The same should be said for these closed
communities, when they "open up." It is in
their ultimate interests to universalize
their community, not hide behind strict
boundaries. Remember that, because of
overlapping communities, you are as likely to
convert your "interlopers" to your way of
thinking as the members of your community are
likely to spontaneously have changes of mind
to become "interlopers" themselves.

When a corporate software developer "shares
its resources with the world at large," i.e.
by putting their product on the market - they
are opening themselves up to exploitation by
piraters and file-sharers. Ultimately,
though, this benefits everyone (too slowly to
save some people's careers, mortgages, shoes
for their kids etc, of course). The
employees, in a sort of forced collective of
capitalist exploitation, will eventually be
liberated by open-source and could return to
the same social role in a more voluntary
collective after the current global system
cracks up! The workers in that "corporate
family" may think they are in a community,
with common interests, united against their
competitors, and either serving or exploiting
the public - but they are also members of
many more important overlapping communities -
their neighbourhoods, families, cities,
ethnicities, friends, and other publics.

On the other hand, when the First Nations of
British Columbia decided it would be a good
idea to trade a little of their fairly-
useless gold with the white foreigners
lurking on the edges of their communities,
they unfortunately sent a lighting-bolt
message all the way to California which
resulted in a wave of armed, Indian-killing
prospectors pillaging their homes for over a
century. This is obviously not the desired
outcome of resource-sharing, but having
learned from this example and others, the
first nations have now formed webs with
socialists, anarchists, other nations and
exploited peoples, etc, and it's pretty darn
hard to go shooting Injuns these days. More
sharing, not less, is the answer.

The tribal peoples I visited in Pakistan,
though, still have an exclusionary solution:
tightening religious dogma and rifles aimed
outward. Not much good against satellite
guided missiles, I'm afraid; that type of
solution plays into the hands of the
interloper, ultimately, since in the early
21st century, the closed, proprietary systems
have the decisive upper hand in brute force
(including lawyers). Infiltration and
networking, making your network extend even
inside the "enemy's" network - these are the
unstoppable tools of the community-minded.
Remember that the fragging of their own
officers by American soldiers played an
important role in the failure of the US
invasion of Vietnam.

(See some video about my travels in Pakistan
at:

<A Href="http://www.120seconds.com/index.cfm?moviet4" target="_blank">http://www.120seconds.com/index.cfm?moviet4</A>
)