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Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks

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Re: Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks

#61

Post by WalterBright »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #58
WalterBright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you would find few people in the art community who agree with this. I happen to know some successful artists (you'd recognize their names), and they are very much in it for the big bucks. You will find many who say they are in it for the purity, but their actions belie it. BTW, your ideal society has a name, it's called a "commune". Communes have been tried over and over in history. Something like 10,000 ha…

What a repulsive argumentative style. >>>I also expect that making money is a prime motivator for artists, and also drives the quality of their work. is a much less hostile claim than >I happen to know some successful artists (you'd recognize their names), and they are very much in it for the big bucks. which could have been made in the initial comment, but then parent wouldn't be able to Other the grandparent for th…

I didn't argue that people cannot work together at scale. My argument, admittedly heavyhanded, is that organizing this work based on altruism does not work. It may work here and there, for a period of time, but it is not sustainable. Organizations that work are ones where people are paid for the work they do, not ones that pay people regardless of the work they do.

By the way, anti-ethical does not mean unethical. It means contrary to, in this case, contrary to human nature. I did not write that communes were anti-ethical. I wrote that they were anti-ethical to human nature, meaning they are contrary to human nature.

There's nothing unethical about voluntary communes, but there's plenty unethical about forcible ones.

Re: Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks

#62

Post by WalterBright »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #60
WalterBright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you would find few people in the art community who agree with this. I happen to know some successful artists (you'd recognize their names), and they are very much in it for the big bucks. You will find many who say they are in it for the purity, but their actions belie it. BTW, your ideal society has a name, it's called a "commune". Communes have been tried over and over in history. Something like 10,000 ha…

You seem to have ignored the point where I cited my sources of what I am talking about working successfully in India right now. It’s not a failure in fact it is a major success. Seriously, watch the video is it heart warming! It’s also very real!

I did watch the video. It was a little thin on details, but appears to be a charity, run by volunteers, funded by donations. Like a scaled up soup kitchen in America.

It's a nice setup, I wish them well with it.

I noticed the host did not chip in to wash dishes or make a donation, though he may have off camera.

They serve 50,000 meals a day in a country with 1,380,000,000 people. That's a long way to go to demonstrate it will work for society.

Re: Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks

#63

Post by TaylorAlexander »

WalterBright wrote: post #61
revolvingocelot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a repulsive argumentative style. >>>I also expect that making money is a prime motivator for artists, and also drives the quality of their work. is a much less hostile claim than >I happen to know some successful artists (you'd recognize their names), and they are very much in it for the big bucks. which could have been made in the initial comment, but then parent wouldn't be able to Other the grandparent for th…

I didn't argue that people cannot work together at scale. My argument, admittedly heavyhanded, is that organizing this work based on altruism does not work. It may work here and there, for a period of time, but it is not sustainable. Organizations that work are ones where people are paid for the work they do, not ones that pay people regardless of the work they do. By the way, anti-ethical does not mean unethical. It…

The Sikhs have been doing their thing for 400 years.

Re: Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks

#64

Post by WalterBright »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #63
WalterBright wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't argue that people cannot work together at scale. My argument, admittedly heavyhanded, is that organizing this work based on altruism does not work. It may work here and there, for a period of time, but it is not sustainable. Organizations that work are ones where people are paid for the work they do, not ones that pay people regardless of the work they do. By the way, anti-ethical does not mean unethical. It…

The Sikhs have been doing their thing for 400 years.

I presume you mean the Langar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langar_(Sikhism)

As I noted in another post here, while an admirable endeavor, it has not managed to serve free meals to a significant percentage of India's population. There are apparently limits to selfless volunteerism.

Re: Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks

#65

Post by zozbot234 »

WalterBright wrote: post #61
revolvingocelot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a repulsive argumentative style. >>>I also expect that making money is a prime motivator for artists, and also drives the quality of their work. is a much less hostile claim than >I happen to know some successful artists (you'd recognize their names), and they are very much in it for the big bucks. which could have been made in the initial comment, but then parent wouldn't be able to Other the grandparent for th…

I didn't argue that people cannot work together at scale. My argument, admittedly heavyhanded, is that organizing this work based on altruism does not work. It may work here and there, for a period of time, but it is not sustainable. Organizations that work are ones where people are paid for the work they do, not ones that pay people regardless of the work they do. By the way, anti-ethical does not mean unethical. It…

> My argument, admittedly heavyhanded, is that organizing this work based on altruism does not work. It may work here and there, for a period of time

For the special case of intellectual creation, which has no marginal cost of reproduction and often benefits from the widest exposure and availability, there are many counterexamples where fully voluntary work has been successful. Even HN itself might fairly be described as one at least partially, since karma points are not a monetary incentive and only the site's moderators and sysops are paid.

Re: Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks

#66

Post by kaba0 »

WalterBright wrote: post #56
kaba0 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A commune in isolation can not protect itself. Another more aggressive group will overtake them given time. That's why I don't believe that end-goal communism or anarchism could ever work (where the former is contrary to many people's idea, is about small communes, not some Big Government). But with a necessarily strong government it is absolutely not impossible to scale a small commune to a whole country. Pair it wi…

A commune in isolation can not protect itself. The US ones did not fail because some more aggressive group overtook them. They failed because they did not work and eventually the members tired of it and left. The state-sponsored kibbutzen in Israel also fail, because they can't exist without massive government subsidy. Communism has been tried many times on a nation scale. 100% failure. Your ideas are not new and the…

Did you even get my point that communism is different from socialism? I very much stated exactly that communism (in my opinion can’t work either). But socialism as a spectrum of ideas has plenty of working aspects included in basically every Western democracy.

Re: Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks

#68

Post by WalterBright »

kaba0 wrote: post #66
WalterBright wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A commune in isolation can not protect itself. The US ones did not fail because some more aggressive group overtook them. They failed because they did not work and eventually the members tired of it and left. The state-sponsored kibbutzen in Israel also fail, because they can't exist without massive government subsidy. Communism has been tried many times on a nation scale. 100% failure. Your ideas are not new and the…

Did you even get my point that communism is different from socialism? I very much stated exactly that communism (in my opinion can’t work either). But socialism as a spectrum of ideas has plenty of working aspects included in basically every Western democracy.

Socialism produces mediocre works, and can't compete with free market operations. This is why socialist operations tend to be heavily subsidized or they simply make free market competitors illegal.

It's most obvious when agriculture is socialized, because it's impossible for people to believe the lie that they aren't starving.

Yes, I know that communism is supposed to be without a government.

Re: Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks

#69

Post by WalterBright »

zozbot234 wrote: post #65
WalterBright wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't argue that people cannot work together at scale. My argument, admittedly heavyhanded, is that organizing this work based on altruism does not work. It may work here and there, for a period of time, but it is not sustainable. Organizations that work are ones where people are paid for the work they do, not ones that pay people regardless of the work they do. By the way, anti-ethical does not mean unethical. It…

> My argument, admittedly heavyhanded, is that organizing this work based on altruism does not work. It may work here and there, for a period of time For the special case of intellectual creation, which has no marginal cost of reproduction and often benefits from the widest exposure and availability, there are many counterexamples where fully voluntary work has been successful. Even HN itself might fairly be describe…

Yes, there are, including myself. I work for free for the D Language Foundation. You can't run a country like that, however.

Re: Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks

#70

Post by ZeroGravitas »

zozbot234 wrote: post #53
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gutenberg was a pioneer and sits at the centre of an ecosystem. Distributed Proofreaders and others like Standard ebooks build on Gutenberg texts and upstream fixes and corrections to them. https://www.pgdp.net/c/

DP proofread from book scans and upload the proofed and processed text to Gutenberg. Standard ebooks takes the Gutenberg texts and further enhances them. So they're operating on opposite stages of the pipeline.

Yeah, but DP feed the text (including corrections) downstream and standardebooks (while adding their own extras) may spot things that slipped through and get them reported and fixed upstream. They don't need to, but they do.
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