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Free Culture Satire

Idiot Screw-Ups

One of the advantages of Free Screwdrivers is that anyone can screw together anything they want. To some this will appear as a novel technological and social phenomenon rather than as simple reform. For corporations this novel phenomenon is another example of society’s progress that can be rerouted into private profit. They could just let their products be opened or taken apart freely by anyone with a screwdriver, but this will not directly maximize shareholder value. So they set up special events and organizations to induce and capture this new value.

To corporations this obviously has nothing to do with screwdriver freedom. They are in charge, it is their playground and their ball. Any idiot can use free screwdrivers, and they can use them to screw up anything they want. A corporate-sponsored event isn’t Free Screwdrivers, it is an Idiot Screw-Up.

Some people may not like being called idiots, and some may not like being told that what they are doing is screwing up. These people are most likely thieves, and so should be ignored.

Some people may not like the fact that because they are regarded as idiots and because what they do is regarded as screwing up the corporations regard it as of no value to them and take it without giving them any rights over it. These people misunderstand how little what they do is worth compared to what the coporation originally provided, and can be ignored as commies.

Idiot Screw Ups provide less shareholder value than the old fashioned way of doing things (sic). That both the increasingly untenable old fashioned way of doing things and the half-hearted embracing the new of Idiot Screw-Ups do not provide as much shareholder value as just letting people tinker and help their friends as they always have done relative to technology is neither here nor there.

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