115 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
115 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
Return-Path: <amdcad!cayman.AMD.COM!steveg@decwrl.dec.com>
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Date: Mon, 11 Jun 90 13:23:30 CDT
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From: steveg@cayman.amd.com (Steve Guccione)
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To: rms@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu
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Subject: Free Coffee Foundation (Copy)
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Cc: steveg@cayman.amd.com
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The Coffee Manifesto
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Copyright (C) 1990 Steve Guccione
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(Copying permission notice at the end.)
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What's Coffee? Its a popular, brown liquid stimulant.
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I have set up a coffee pot in my cubicle for people who enjoy coffee,
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and want more quality and variety than the corporate-sponsored coffee
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service provides. Several other volunteers are helping me.
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Contributions of time, money, coffee and equipment are greatly
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needed.
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So far we have a Proctor-Silex 10 cup coffee pot, and about five
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different types of coffee, some sugar cubes, some non-dairy creamer
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and 2500 plastic stirrers. We hope to supply, eventually, everything
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useful that normally comes with a Coffee system, and more.
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How Coffee Will Be Available
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Coffee is not in the public domain. Everyone will be permitted to
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make and drink coffee, but no one will be allowed to restrict its
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further redistribution. That is to say, proprietary coffee will not
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be allowed. I want to make sure that all coffee brewed remains free.
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Why Many Other Coffee Drinkers Want to Help
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I have found many other Coffee drinkers who are excited about the Free
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Coffee Foundation and want to help.
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Many coffee drinkers are unhappy about the in house coffee system.
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It may enable them to drink more coffee, but it requires them to
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drink the same type of coffee every day.
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How You Can Contribute
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I am asking coffee drinkers for donations of machines, coffee,
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supplies and money.
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One consequence you can expect if you donate coffee is that you will
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be able to drink it during the work day. The coffee machines should
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be complete, ready to use systems, approved for use in a residential
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area, and not in need of sophisticated cooling or power.
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Why All Coffee Drinkers Will Benefit
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Once coffee is made, everyone will be able to obtain good coffee.
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The complete coffee system will be available to everyone. As a
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result, a coffee drinker who wants a different brand of coffee will
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always be free to make it himself. Coffee drinkers will no longer
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be at the mercy of one company which owns the coffee machine and is in
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sole position sell us their coffee.
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Finally, the overhead of considering who owns the coffee system and what
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one is or is not entitled to do with it will be lifted.
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Arrangements to make people pay for coffee always incur a tremendous
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cost to society through the cumbersome mechanisms necessary to figure
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out how much a person must pay for. And only a police state can force
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everyone to obey them. Consider a space station where air must be
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manufactured at great cost: charging each breather per liter of air
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may be fair, but wearing the metered gas mask all day and all night is
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intolerable even if everyone can afford to pay the air bill. And the
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TV cameras everywhere to see if you ever take the mask off are
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outrageous. It's better to support the air plant with a head tax and
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chuck the masks.
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Drinking coffee is as natural as breathing, and as productive. It
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ought to be as free.
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In the long run, the FCF is a step toward the post-scarcity world,
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where nobody will have to work very hard just to be able to drink
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coffee. People will be free to devote themselves to activities that
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are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a
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week on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot
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repair and asteroid prospecting.
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We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole
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society must do for its actual productivity, but only a little of this
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has translated itself into leisure for workers because much
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nonproductive activity is required to accompany productive activity.
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The main causes of this are bureaucracy and isometric struggles
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against competition. Free coffee will greatly reduce these
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drains in the area of coffee services. We must do this,
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in order for technical gains in productivity to translate into
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less work and better coffee for us.
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Copyright (C) 1985 Steve Guccione
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Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
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of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
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copyright notice and permission notice are preserved,
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and that the distributor grants the recipient permission
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for further redistribution as permitted by this notice.
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Modified versions may not be made.
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