Free Software and Libertarianism
Published by Yazad Jal January 28th, 2004 in Web WorldDavid J. Heinrich at the Mises blog writes about Richard Stallman (RMS) and the free software movement.
This is a very interesting example of how one individual — without even the incentive of great profit, but only of moral correctness — can make an enormous difference, and create alternatives, which individuals on a free market can choose over expensive competing products. Essentially, RMS said, “I don’t like proprietary software, I think programmers should share source code,” and he did something about it. He created the FSF, which is the starting point for all of the Free Software, and Open Source Software, that we have today (OSS is a rift from FS, OSS being more focused on appealing to business than the moral issues dealt with by the FS). Various competitors have whined and whined about MS out-competing them, and have nagged the government into wasting billions of taxpayer dollars to “sanction Microsoft” (despite the fact that it is not violating anyone’s proeprty rights). Meanwhile, at the same time and before, RMS and his followers were actually doing something productive.
I’ve broached the topic last year while linking to a well written piece on The Libertarian Nature of Open Source Software. Of course there is no dearth of whiners about Microsoft.
Interesting how libertarians choose to jump on the bandwagon AFTER it is clear that it is a success - not only they jump on to the bandwagon after that they claim it is a Libertarian idea.
If open source had not been a success I can bet you the libertarians would have stated their usual BS that effort without profit is a waste.
Also if you vist Richard Stallman’s site you can see that he is as far away from libertarianism as can be - in fact he’s endorsing Dennis Kucinich for President and you really don’t get any further left than that.
Glad to see that libertarians can embrace leftist ideas - especially when its proving to be a runaway success - very libertarian of the ;)
Ridiculous arguments CK. You seem to have your own pet ideas of libertarianism which may not fit with what libertarian thought is.
No one is claiming that the Free Software movement is a libertarian idea per se. Just observing it’s nature and how some of the actions are libertarian.
Stallman’s personal philosophy has also been discussed in the links I provided — if you bothered to read them before starting your usual tirades.
From Unpersons:
From the Mises blog:
Well apprently I am not the only one who has ‘pet’ ideas about libertarianism - you your self do not agree with the largest libertarian organization in the world - the Libertarian Party so how can you say that my ideas are ridiculous.
I do not undersand how Open Source software is libertarian. If anything it appears counter-libertarian. I advise you to read the principals of open souurce here http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
and tell me which of these the libertarian movement would support if open source hadn’t turned out to be such a success. I really do want to know how the libertarians think this is libertarian in nature I would like to see your analysis on it.
I notice that libertarians are up in arms when the pharmaceutical industry in the third world wants the MNC’s to forgo some rights and makes some of the drug technologies open source - so they can be developed independently.
Ck, you don’t consider yourself libertarian. Then let those who do, define libertarianism. You seem to be attacking my calling “x” libertarian, so allow me to tell you what I mean by libertarian. If we don’t agree on that, then we’re talking about two different things. I’ll take L. Neil Smith’s definition:
Read a bit more about libertarianism. The definition above can be found here. A few FAQs can be found here.
Now, what in the Open Source link provided above contradicts the defn I gave above? In a libertarian world, you’re free to set up a communist commune if you wish as long as you don’t insist that everybody becomes a member of your commune or prevent capitalists from running for-profit housing.
Hi guys,
CK, the particular example that you gave of pharma. If you apply OSS/FSF/GPL type licensing to Pharma, you would have to setup a new research instituition or company, that develops *new* drugs, the patents to which are released under a GPL-like license.
Backward inference of what you are suggesting, is what the Justice Department/Netscape case tried to do with Microsoft, i.e. force it to release its code. FSF/OSS/GPLers don’t try to force MS to do anything, they just make good solid software that can compete with MS. But since they have had a lag I think, they will take a while till they come up to the level of MS.
Moral indignation on the part of Stallman and others, is their equivalent of MS’ efforts to deface Linux through T.C.O studies and maybe through this SCO case.
A libertarian would whole heartedly support the Linux cause in the SCO case especially against the back hand legislation tactics that are being used.And at the same time would defend MS on the grounds that it is doing a helluva job of providing usable software, and more importantly if people *choose* they can use other software, for instance i gave up IE long ago, and now I’ve even given up Explorer.exe in favour of GeoShell an open source alternative.
Strict,boxed categorisation of people into classes, is an extremely nasty habit, that many people seem to find convenient when trying to lambast people whom they don’t see eye to eye with.
Hi guys,
CK, the particular example that you gave of pharma. If you apply OSS/FSF/GPL type licensing to Pharma, you would have to setup a new research instituition or company, that develops *new* drugs, the patents to which are released under a GPL-like license.
Backward inference of what you are suggesting, is what the Justice Department/Netscape case tried to do with Microsoft, i.e. force it to release its code. FSF/OSS/GPLers don’t try to force MS to do anything, they just make good solid software that can compete with MS. But since they have had a lag I think, they will take a while till they come up to the level of MS.
Moral indignation on the part of Stallman and others, is their equivalent of MS’ efforts to deface Linux through T.C.O studies and maybe through this SCO case.
A libertarian would whole heartedly support the Linux cause in the SCO case especially against the back hand legislation tactics that are being used.And at the same time would defend MS on the grounds that it is doing a helluva job of providing usable software, and more importantly if people *choose* they can use other software, for instance i gave up IE long ago, and now I’ve even given up Explorer.exe in favour of GeoShell an open source alternative.
Strict,boxed categorisation of people into classes, is an extremely nasty habit, that many people seem to find convenient when trying to lambast people whom they don’t see eye to eye with.
BTW, this is from Stallman’s website, seems quite classical liberal, if not Libertarian to me..
http://www.stallman.org/brave-and-free.jpg
Yazad - don’t you think that using this broad definition you include almost every human being in it. It’s like me staring a movement called CKists and saying that everybody who has 46 chromosomes is a CKist whether they know it or not. Most rational people will then ask what does it mean to be a CKist - is having 46 chromosomes enough or are there other beliefs that go into being a CKist.
I look at the historical Libertarian view on the profit motive, charity and property rights to make my judgement - not on 3 lines which can be universally applied to the entire human race.
I’ve noticed that this is a common libertarian tactic - ignore the details and complexity of an issue and come up wiht a key catch phrase which can be universally applied - a bit like CCS’ Economics in 1 Lesson - damn and I spent 5 years in university studying it and getting a bachelors and a masters - what an idiot I am when CCS can teach me everything I need to know in a few hours.
I am interested in seeing a side by side analysis of libertarian principles (since you don’t agree with the popular libertarian institutions)I will accep the Yazad version of libertarianism (though I distinctly recall that a while ago you had distanced yourself from libertarianism and were calling yourself an Anarcho-Capitalist).
For your comment
The libertarian paradox
By Gerry McGovern
There seems to be a rule that everything embodies a paradox, that everything embodies its opposite.
From the very first period I used the Internet around 1994, I came across information by libertarians who were calling for government to get off the Internet. The more I learned about the Internet, the more strange this demand became. If ever there was a case of ‘biting the hand that feeds’ these libertarians were exhibiting it in spades.
What the hell is a libertarian, I hear you ask? According to the Advocates for Self-Government website, libertarians “want a win-win world of peace and plenty. And we believe that the only way to get it is through self-government… NOT others-government. Self-government is the combination of personal responsibility and tolerance. Responsibility means you govern yourself. Tolerance means you don’t force your values on peaceful, honest people. Today, however, others-government is giving us insecurity, conflict and poverty. Let’s revitalize our heritage of self-government to create a win-win world where everyone comes out ahead.”
A liberal believes in freedom in personal issues and in government support in economic issues. A conservative believes in freedom in economic issues and government control in personal issues. A libertarian believes in freedom in all issues – no interference anywhere.
So, if libertarians don’t believe in government, how come they have embraced the Internet with such energy? Surely, the Internet is one of the greatest examples of long-term government funding the world has ever seen? The libertarian philosophy is also evident in the open source software movement.
Again, surely libertarians would accept that without government-funded universities (not to mention the Internet), there would be very little open source software about today. (Linux, for example, having been originally developed at the University of Helsinki.)
The more I think about open source software, the more I come to believe that it is based on an essentially libertarian philosophy and thus exists within a paradox that will test it severely as it spreads out into the wider world.
The Internet is a frontier and libertarianism is very much frontier-thinking. It is, in essence, every man (and woman) for himself/herself. Open source software, which is thriving on the Internet, is very much a peer-based environment. Everybody helps out by throwing into the pot some of their free time. Everybody contributes, whether it is in lines of code or bug reports. Everybody pulls their own weight and everything is fine.
Although things are changing, the Internet has been very much a rarefied environment inhabited by a select group of relatively wealthy, technically literate individuals. Unfortunately, the great mass of people are not able to write lines of code, nor are they interested in sending in bug reports. If you market to them well, they might buy your product, but in that money they pay is an implicit contract that the product will work and that if it doesn’t work, you will fix it.
The Internet to me is one of the greatest validations of central government and taxation. Sure, I don’t like paying tax, but I like even less the alternatives. To further develop, open source software needs to square the circle – how to be built at the frontier and yet serve the mass market.
Ck,
I am sure you have already read Hayek’s Constituition of Liberty (though I have read only parts), in the Postscript titled “Why I am not a conservative”, he outlines the ideas that more or less explain his core liberal/libertarian position vis-a-vis the Conservatives. His position is also something that would encompass most of humanity, in that we would like to think that we are classical liberals - tolerant, peace loving and humble etc. But there are conservatives, socialists, militarists and nationalists in this world of many hues, among them people who firmly believe that the rich are the ruin of this earth that they are exploiting the rest of us, and others who believe that military rule, of discipline and coercive adherence to a particular line of action is the only thing that can save the world. These are common people who hold these beliefs, and would never agree with the liberal/libertarian line of thought.
Most of your critique, or atleast its tone seems to have been picked up from the Anti_Lib FAQ. You are taking a blithely critical stand, which is what you accuse Libs of doing about government and people who preach bigger government.
Also regarding the linear description of the ideology space cf. Hayek’s Postscript.
The problem stems from you (and others) using term ‘liberal’ and ‘libertarian’ interchnageably and routinely mixing the ideology of the two (though they do share some common beliefs). Maybe it is because I have an American bias but in America ‘liberals’ and libertarians are at two OPPOSITE ends of the political spectrum despite what Hayek might have to say about it.
I’m not sure where you get your information from, but libertarianism is about being free of coercion, not about profit. If profit is a product of non-coercive action, then it is certainly consistent with libertarianism. If charity is a product of non-coercive action, then it is certainly consistent with libertarianism. If open-source software is a product of non-coercive action, then it is certainly consistent with libertarianism.
Two of my co-bloggers, David Masten and Qiwi Lisolet, both of whom are radical libertarians, are open-source enthusiasts. Eric Raymond, a self-described anarcholibertarian, is one of the leading advocates in the world of open-source software. He argues that open-source is superior due to its very libertarian nature: it’s decentralized creation acts as a laboratory for filtering out bad programming and promoting good programming. See:
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
(The prior message was intended for Ck)
The claim that “libertarianism is about being free of coercion” is absolutely true but is so vast and encompasses almost every aspct of humanity that it fails to carry any weight. A majority of humans beleive that life should be free of coercion but that does not make them libertarians. To use the old logical arguement
All crows are black (major premise).
This bird is black (minor premise).
Therefore, this bird is a crow (conclusion).
Applied to the arguements made above (not exactly my apologoies but you get the jist)
Open Source is about non-coercion
My libertarian (hence non-coercion supporting) friend X supports Open Source
Therefore Open Source is libertarian
No fault in the logic but it does not take into account balckbirds. The case in point being Darl McBride the CEO of SCO who is incidentally a self-proclaimed libertarian and is trying hard to undermine the movement.
The claim that “libertarianism is about being free of coercion” is absolutely true but is so vast and encompasses almost every aspct of humanity that it fails to carry any weight. A majority of humans beleive that life should be free of coercion but that does not make them libertarians.
Not true. A majority of humans do not believe that life should be free of coercion. The majority believes in the Drug War, laws against prostitution, taxation, “soaking the rich”, mandatory vaccination, etc etc etc.
If Darl McBride calls himself a libertarian, he is being a hypocrite.
Drug wars, prostitution etc are too big to discuss here but your last line…
“If Darl McBride calls himself a libertarian, he is being a hypocrite.”
Why exactly is that? Here is a summary of the SCO case as I understand it (and before I proceed you should know that I don’t agree with SCO and am a big OSS fan).
- SCO (formerly Caldera) owns Source code in UNIX
- Some of that Source code is apparently an integral part of Linux (let us assume for the sake of argument that this is in fact true as SCO claims)
- Linux is distributed free with a component that is integral to it which is NOT free and is owned by a private company.
Hence:
Why should SCO not demand payment from Linux users who are using parts of code owned by it for free? Aren’t Libertarians strong proponents of Intellectual Property Rights?
The Linux community’s argument is that they are not charging for code they (the Linux programmers) put out so why should they pay anything to SCO.
This argument is fundamentally flawed. Its the equivalent of saying that because I make compilation CD’s from various artists (some are garage bands which give their music away free while others like P.Diddy copyright their music) and give it away free on the street, I don’t have to pay P.Diddy a royalty because I am not benefitting financially from giving away CDs with his music on it for free.
Isn’t this exactly the libertarian case for IPRs and strong copyright laws?
Nothing is “too big” to discuss here CK. I too find your dismissal of the libertarian definition I gave very flimsy. Let me repeat the operative part of L Neil Smith’s defn: A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation.
Read it again. See all that it excludes. Taxation for one, price controls, conscription, I could go on. It’s a restrictive defn, not inclusive. I remember when I’d put a similar defn on the Spontaneous_Order egroup sometime back, your criticism was exactly the opposite.
There is a debate on in libertarian circles about IPR. Maybe you could read that before making blanket statements.
By too big I meant that if the original discussion was about Richard Stallman and OSS don’t you think its slightly off topic to discuss prostitution, taxation and prostitution under the same heading. I was just trying to stay on topic…but if you insist…
Using your definition “A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation.”
…then taxation is fine because you have a choice about paying taxes. If you don’t want to pay taxes you can always move to a country which doesn’t have taxes. Nobody is forcing you stay in India or the US - you are free to leave anytime you like - but you choose to stay and the law (agreed upon by some 1 billion people - it is a democracy) says that the government will tax your income).
Say for instance it was not the government but a private institution called Bombay City Private Ltd (BCPL) which owned the city of Bombay. If they charged you rent to live there - you would happily pay up and if I said that was wrong you would say that I am free to move out of Bombay if I don’t like the rent.
..same thing. Think of taxation as the rent you pay to live in India - for a measly (what is the tax rate in India 20%?) x% of your income you get
- Protection from China (big bad communist country to the east)
- Protection from Pakistan (big bad Islamic country to the west)
- A passport to travel the world (try entering any other country with a passport from Water World (or Jal Land)).
There is a lot more that is offered (roads, lighting etc) but I for one was generally dissatisfied withe the quality of service offered so I looked around and found that for a lower rent I could get better service in the US so I moved. I still pay for the services but at a lower rate. You are absolutely free to do the same.
Aren’t Libertarians strong proponents of Intellectual Property Rights?
No! There is much debate in the libertarian community over the topic of IP rights. My position is that they can only be created via contract and that 3rd parties not bound by the terms of the contract cannot be held responsible for their use of the IP, resulting in a practically impossible task of securing IP rights.
…then taxation is fine because you have a choice about paying taxes. If you don’t want to pay taxes you can always move to a country which doesn’t have taxes. Nobody is forcing you stay in India or the US - you are free to leave anytime you like - but you choose to stay and the law (agreed upon by some 1 billion people - it is a democracy) says that the government will tax your income).
Bad argument. Why should I have to physically move my body and my property if I don’t want violence performed on it? If I stay still, does that justify bludgeoning me or locking me up in a metal box? You might think so, and I wouldn’t be surprised; ethical behavior is rare in today’s world. But that is completely incongruent with Smith’s quote posted by Yazad above.
By the same reasoning, the victims of the Nazi Holocaust and Soviet communism did not have their rights violated. They were free to leave, but since they didn’t, violence against them is morally justified.
Say for instance it was not the government but a private institution called Bombay City Private Ltd (BCPL) which owned the city of Bombay. If they charged you rent to live there - you would happily pay up and if I said that was wrong you would say that I am free to move out of Bombay if I don’t like the rent.
The fundamental difference is that the govt did not build my house nor create my body. A more apt analogy would be my knocking on your door late at night demanding $500 for protection. Protection from what, you ask? Oh I dunno…but I just heard that bad things might happen if you don’t pay up. And by the way, unless you leave by tomorrow morning, I will conclude that you accept your new protection service, and the fees are due tomorrow afternoon. Or else bad things might happen.
There is a lot more that is offered (roads, lighting etc) but I for one was generally dissatisfied withe the quality of service offered so I looked around and found that for a lower rent I could get better service in the US so I moved. I still pay for the services but at a lower rate. You are absolutely free to do the same.
Am I ‘free’ to contract voluntarily with another power company at my current home? Or are other companies not even allowed to exist? If I started my own company just about anywhere in the US, I would get shut down immediately. If I resisted, brute force…real, physical force…would be used to invade the premises and shut down the enterprise.
That’s a strange definition of “free” you have.
Jonathan stole the ideas right out of my brain! Damn!! ;-)
I seem to have missed something big that CK stated earlier on.
CK, this example of a syllogism is a fallacy. Your minor premise and your major premise are non-sequitors, i.e. they are unconnected. Your major premise says something about crows. Your minor premise says something about birds. Now crows and birds are not the same. Obviously, your conclusion is false. You confidently state
Well, as your syllogism itself is fallacious, reading your extrapolation from it into whatever is a useless exercise in promoting more fallacies.
Thank you for pointing out that is a logical fallacy - you have just proved my point. I used the fallacy to show that what you are saying about libertarians and open source is also a fallacy.
In Response to Jonathan:
“The fundamental difference is that the govt did not build my house nor create my body. A more apt analogy would be my knocking on your door late at night demanding $500 for protection. Protection from what, you ask? Oh I dunno…but I just heard that bad things might happen if you don’t pay up. And by the way, unless you leave by tomorrow morning, I will conclude that you accept your new protection service, and the fees are due tomorrow afternoon. Or else bad things might happen.”
This is where we fundamentally disagree. To me taxes are the price you pay for the right to call your self a citizen. You do not own the right to call yourself an Indian or an American. It is like a club you HAVE to join. Nothing you can do about it you were born in the premises of the club.
So you are right the government did not build your house or your body but the house your body was born in is on a plot of land and the land is in a club called India.
Club India sends you a notice saying “hey buddy you were born in your private house on a private plot of land but guess what I own India and your land happens to be in India - so you can live in your house on your little plot of land but when you turn 18 and start making some money you have to slip a little bit of it my way”
“Why?” you scream - “why should I give you anything - what have you ever done for me”
Club India: “hey you’re using my name (calling yourself an Indian) and your living on land which is in my territory. You can do what you like with the land but it still falls within the territorial boundaries of India which is legally, politically and economically recognized by the rest of the world as being a soverign property of India and you don’t get that right for free.”
“What are my options?” you ask
“Well you can declare yourself an independent nation and ask the world community to recognize you as such but be warned Club India is not going to let you get away with it without a fight so be prepared”
or
“You can move to another country and hope they don’t ask you to pay for the right to live there but by the way there are no real countries like that ”
Jonathan wrote:
Am I ‘free’ to contract voluntarily with another power company at my current home? Or are other companies not even allowed to exist? If I started my own company just about anywhere in the US, I would get shut down immediately. If I resisted, brute force…real, physical force…would be used to invade the premises and shut down the enterprise.
Oh other companies are allowed to exist - but you can’t walk into the corporate office of GE and say this is mine from now on. If you can find a office space of your own which nobody else owns - you are free to set up your own company.
You can’t put a fence around your propery in the middle of Kansas and declare it independent - you may own the property but the property is within the territory of the US. You are of course free to find an island in international waters and claim it for your own and do as you like but if you live within the boundaries of a country you have no choice but to accep their laws.
This is where we fundamentally disagree. To me taxes are the price you pay for the right to call your self a citizen. You do not own the right to call yourself an Indian or an American. It is like a club you HAVE to join. Nothing you can do about it you were born in the premises of the club.
So you are right the government did not build your house or your body but the house your body was born in is on a plot of land and the land is in a club called India.
So you are saying that the US govt owns you.
Fine. But I thought slavery was ended 150 years ago.
I have a different view. Each individual owns himself and his property. Anyone claiming ownership of him or his property is a thug, a gangster. Often these gangsters dress up in Armani suits and drive Mercedes and say “Fuggedabboutit” a lot. Others are found in inner city neighbordhoods carrying out drive-by shootings and dealing drugs. A peculiar brand of gangsters wear nice conservative suits and drape themselves in a red, white, and blue flag, and claim ownership of a club called the “United States”. They demand you pay your dues. If you don’t pay, they put out a warrant for your arrest. If you don’t turn yourself in, they come to your house. If you don’t let them in, they try to break in. If you try to defend yourself, they shoot you.
They may call what they do “public service” but it’s important to remember that they are gangsters, and always will be.
And when they claim ownership over you and your property because of a mythical “club” they created for which they are demanding “dues”, when you morally accept their claim, you are reduced to a slave.
Maybe you enjoy being a slave. I sure as hell do not.
So play this role of slave all you want. But don’t be surprised that I don’t accept your wishes that I supplicate myself similarly.
You claim that you are not a slave.
Well what is it that you are doing any different from me. I assume you are in the US and you pay your taxes same as me.
If you think I am a slave then so be it - but I make the best of my situation and do pretty well at the end of the day.
You are a slave too but all you do is whine and moan - accept reality and make the best of it. If you don’t then you can join the Anarchist militia in Michigan who run around the woods all day with M-16 preparing to fight the big bad government. Since I assume that you are not running around the woods proclaiming your freedom - you are just a slave like the rest of us but instead of making the best of it you whine ;)
“Accept reality” is the CK mantra. It doesn’t answer what Jonathan asked earlier. If your government is headed by Mr. Adolf Hitler and you are a Jew, would you still say “accept reality”?
Regarding your earlier faulty logic:
Well the major premise Open Source is about non-coercion is enough for me. Regardless of who supports it, the fact that it is about non-coercion makes it appealing from a libertarian point of view. After all the libertarian point of view is basically that — NON-COERCION.
You are a slave too but all you do is whine and moan - accept reality and make the best of it. If you don’t then you can join the Anarchist militia in Michigan who run around the woods all day with M-16 preparing to fight the big bad government. Since I assume that you are not running around the woods proclaiming your freedom - you are just a slave like the rest of us but instead of making the best of it you whine ;)
So the discussion has moved from one of the ethics of property rights to one of “whining”. Fine. Yes, I ‘whine’ all the time on my blog. The abolitionists of the 19th century also whined, and lucky for the slaves they did. The classical liberals of the 17th and 18th century also ‘whined’ and lucky for Western Civilization they did. They didn’t accept any nonsense about the King owning their house or their possessions.
You might think the only recourse is to join a militia. I have no wish to join a militia, but have no problem with those that do. You are fooling yourself if you think armed revolution is the only means to free yourself from this slavery which you so nobly accept. There are many other strategies that others who don’t accept their slave status embrace - using technological change to bring the state to its knees. Strong cryptography, hawala systems, offshore banking, quantum encryption, private space industry, wireless networking, digital cash, and more are spreading power to the periphery empowering the individual. The strategy is not to go through the state with a militia, but rather to go away from and around the state, making it irrelevant.
Slavery was NOT abolished by the whining of abolitionists nor were the king’s powers curtailed by the distribution of pamphlets (the ancient version of a blog). Slavery was abolished by a the abolitionists fighting and winning an election, coming to power in the government and Abraham Lincoln signing a GOVERNMENT decree that slavery be abolisihed. Using YOUR methods “whining” “moaning” did not abolish slavery.
“Strong cryptography, hawala systems, offshore banking, quantum encryption, private space industry, wireless networking, digital cash”
I think you have just strung a bunch of “in” words together.
Strong cryptography and quantum encryption?? These are merely ways to pass data from point A to point B without it being intercepted. Alone they can achieve absolutely nothing because you also need to have Trust Certificates on both ends validated by a third party. Merely moving uninterceptable data from one point to another does not achieve anything and am eager to see how you think this could curtail the role of the government.
Wireless Networking??
The only reason that the 802.11 a, b and g standards can even exist today is because the government has kept a tight rain on the radio spectrum - otherwise your wireless emails would be on the same frequecey as by cell phone and microwave oven - you’d have some REALLY strong encryption then if all your emails were interspersed with signals from my blender.
Digital Cash??
What exactly is that? I remember reading about it in a science fiction novel - care to explain how it would work?
More on Digital Cash - note that he only talks about tranferring of ‘real’ money digitally.
Digital cash brings benefits as well as problems. One major advantage of digital cash is its increased efficiency opening new opportunities, especially for small businesses. On the other hand, it will encourage potentially the worsening of problems over taxation and money laundering. In turn, these problems may alter foreign exchange rates, disturb money supplies, and encourage an overall financial crisis.
The transnationality of digital cash - the ability of digital cash to flow freely across national borders - encourages these benefits and problems, and could have significant repercussions internationally.
From an economic view, this transnationality is the most important characteristic of digital cash. If digital cash behaved like traditional currencies, circulating within a national border and controlled by a central monetary authority, there would be few economic implications that would be worth analyzing. In this scenario, digital cash would be nothing more than a convenient transaction method such as a credit card.
However, digital cash’s very transnationality has the potential to cause conflict between cyberspace and nation states. If digital cash spreads successfully in the next century, its history may be written as a transcript of economic battles between nation states.
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2/digital_cash/
Slavery was NOT abolished by the whining of abolitionists nor were the king’s powers curtailed by the distribution of pamphlets (the ancient version of a blog). Slavery was abolished by a the abolitionists fighting and winning an election, coming to power in the government and Abraham Lincoln signing a GOVERNMENT decree that slavery be abolisihed. Using YOUR methods “whining” “moaning” did not abolish slavery.
What do you think was at the heart of this political movement? Do you think it just happened at random? The idea precedes the action, and classical liberals had been writing and spreading ideas for over a hundred years prior to the emancipation.
Regardless, your claim that it took a Lincoln to end slavery is dubious. There were only two nations in the world that required a war to end slavery - the US and Haiti. All of the rest ended it peacefully, partly because of the ideas of the classical liberals. The only reason it took a war in the US was that a bloodthirsty dictator was in power who wanted to expand the powers of the Federal Govt above and beyond what the Constitution mandated, and he used Emancipation as a political tool to make it happen.
Strong cryptography and quantum encryption?? These are merely ways to pass data from point A to point B without it being intercepted.
Not exactly. Crypto still allows interception of the message. However, the intercepted message will be uninterpretable.
Alone they can achieve absolutely nothing because you also need to have Trust Certificates on both ends validated by a third party. Merely moving uninterceptable data from one point to another does not achieve anything and am eager to see how you think this could curtail the role of the government.
The govt is definitely not required for knowing who is sending you the message. With Public Key Cryptography, a digital stamp is used as a ‘fingerprint’ to verify the identity of the sender of the message.
Public Key Cryptography can still be broken with enough computer power (even ’strong’ crypto can be broken although it is difficult unless you have a ton of computer power). But quantum crypto is (supposedly) essentially unbreakable.
The transnationality of digital cash - the ability of digital cash to flow freely across national borders - encourages these benefits and problems, and could have significant repercussions internationally.
From an economic view, this transnationality is the most important characteristic of digital cash. If digital cash behaved like traditional currencies, circulating within a national border and controlled by a central monetary authority, there would be few economic implications that would be worth analyzing. In this scenario, digital cash would be nothing more than a convenient transaction method such as a credit card.
However, digital cash’s very transnationality has the potential to cause conflict between cyberspace and nation states. If digital cash spreads successfully in the next century, its history may be written as a transcript of economic battles between nation states.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Seriously, you are making my arguments for me. It is the very death of the nation state that I desire. That’s the whole point. If not its death, then at least its impotence. You probably don’t realize it, but the US govt is stealing money from your wallet at this very moment. It’s called inflation, and with every ticking second the $10 note in your wallet is being deprectiated. Govt’s control of the money supply is a political tool that redistributes money to favored politcal classes without taxation, causes malinvestment, and results in the Boom-Bust business cycles of economies.
Whether you realize it or not, money at root arises from civil society, as the most marketable commodity. Various commodities have been used as money before, and through the process of weeding out bad money, most societies chose gold and silver as money. It was privately produced from the Earth, refined in mines, lent out from banks, and circulated as warehouse receipts.
Govts, in the voracious apetite for power, took over the function of money because of a belief in much economic nonsense about being able to ‘boost’ economies when needed, a desire to centrally regulate monetary affairs, and of course, a way to obtain funds without taxation. This has resulted in a historically new state of affairs using fiat currency, which is not backed by any commodity, allowing govts to inflate the money supply and cause business cycles. Yet, every single fiat currency in history has achieved its final certain value of zero; the dollar will be no different.
Digital Cash allows people to conteract this constant loss of their own wealth by avoiding the fiat currency system. Consequently, one large power of nation state will be taken away.
Which brings me back to the main thrust of my argument - that crypto is a tool for the strengthening of communities and relationships that make nation-states irrelevant. Unfortunately, this is not the forum in which to go into further detail in this, and I have written enough today, but I will link some key articles, if you are truly interested:
Why Crypto Matters - a nice, brief overview of the potential of strong crypto
The Cyphernomicon by Tim May - a more comprehensive (but still not thorough) explanation of the implications of strong crypto
Now lets make every thing clear. First of all Stallman is a liberal (if you beleve this interview)
Resonance: Is there a larger philosophical framework within which the Free Software movement resides, for example, the Libertarian view?
Stallman: I am a Liberal, not a Libertarian. I launched the Free Software movement because I had experienced a community and I wanted to have a community again. For me, free software is part of a general view that people should work together for the general good. A social system where software owners can dominate and divide users is a bad system. A social system where a few people become very rich while the others have a hard life is a bad system. The details of the issues are very different, but the spirit is the same. Property rights are a useful system, and I wouldn’t want to abolish them. But when employed too strictly, they cause suffering, so we mustn’t do that either. Property is a useful tool for promoting human happiness. But we need other tools as well, such as the welfare state. Libertarians elevate one of these tools above human happiness, and human happiness suffers as a result. Since the US abandoned Liberal policies, life has become harder for most Americans, especially the poorest-even though production has increased.
www.resonancepub.com/rstallman.htm
I think that you can’t say that open source is a part of just one political ideologi that very many seems to think. If you ask Stallman he prabably say that to him free software is about liberal views. If you ask Eric Raymond he will ansewr that free software is libertarianism.
Since I am a libertarian I would answere that free software/open source is a libertarian movment. See my point?
There is not just one political movment here. Linux, free software, open source should be something for everyone!
The thig that makes me most angry though are those people that claims that free software/open source is 100% communistic. Well duhhh! Threr are not just communist that are willing to share software!