From "shock treatments" to enclosing the Open Source commons

In the early 1990’s when I was still studying economics, at Wisconsin, there were many discussions on how to responsibily transition Russia’s econmony from State Planning to a Market. To do that, you need institutions and norms and I saw many job market papers on how that could be structured. That work was thrown aside when then-Treasury Secretary Rubin announced the Russian economy was to be looted.

Because of that, much of Russia’s economy looks more like warring gangs than ours (although the GOP is following Russia’s lead here.) And because of that, we might find critical parts of our open source infrastructure privatized.

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