On Scalability

clipped from jwherring.com Today I came across a true gem - from hacker Eric S. Raymond via the EconTalk Podcast. Love doesn’t scale. What a great way to put it! Raymond was saying this as a reaction to one of Walter Williams’ favorite rhetorical questions, which goes something like this. We live in the city, and we have to eat, but we can’t produce our own food on the limited space we have in the city, so we absolutely depend on farmers to keep us fed. Do you want to bet your survival on the farmer who brings you chickens because he “loves mankind,” or do you want to bet your survival on the guy who brings you chickens out of a profit motive? Obviously, the guy who does it for money is more reliable: your future is solid with Capitalism. The reason I like the way Eric Raymond puts it a lot better than Walter Williams’ already useful analogy - aside from how beautifully concise it is, I mean - is that Raymond’s version makes it clear that the issue isn’t a defect in love but a problem of perspective.