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Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free sy
From: |
Erica Frank |
Subject: |
Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society |
Date: |
Mon, 10 Jan 2022 13:06:02 -0800 |
On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 9:44 AM Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss
<[1]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org> wrote:
Hi, friends at Libreplanet.
During a discussion in #fsf, we were quite critical of modern
society,
especially on copyright, patents, "intellectual property",
healthcare
and Capitalism. A (possibly sarcastic of modern society) suggestion
was raised to build islands in the middle of oceans from plastic
waste
and run a free society there.
This has been tried. Multiple times. It flops horribly because (1) the
people throwing money at it would like to believe that they won't be
bound by international treaties & local laws and (2) it's invariably
started by a group that wants to be a master class, and imagine they
will bring in servant-types at some later date, and that those
servant-types will be content to live and work under conditions that
don't give them the protections they have from existing laws.
Examples:
2014 [2]https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10
2016
[3]https://www.gq.com/story/the-libertarian-utopia-thats-just-a-bunch-o
f-white-guys-on-a-tiny-island
2017
[4]https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-
libertarian-experiment-america-215313/
2020 [5]https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-b
ear-book-review-free-town-project
2021
[6]https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voyage-satos
hi-cryptocurrency-cruise-ship-seassteading
And the shiny new attempt for 2022: [7]https://cryptoland.is/
A "free" ocean nation is possible... if you don't need wifi or other
technology that comes from land; if you don't need to buy food or get
medical services from land; if you don't need to dock a ship anywhere;
if you don't intend to export goods or services to any country. If you
do plan to maintain connections with the mainland, there's a host of
laws and international treaties that will apply. And most of the "live
free" movements want that to be "live free and rich," not "find
somewhere that we can do subsistence farming where no gov't will care
enough to notice us." You can live free by moving to any number of
remote, inhospitable locales. In groups, even. But you can't live
tax-free and still participate in commerce with people who pay taxes.
(Well, it's possible, but the setup for that isn't "invent a country in
a spot nobody's claimed"; it's "invent a business that shuffles money
in so many directions that governments get dizzy trying to find the cup
with the ball under it.")
I thought: Why aren't we doing a great job convincing users to
switch to
free software as a replacement to the proprietary software they use?
Some classmates that I tried convincing into using Trisquel
GNU/Linux
noted that most modern programs that they use day-to-day only run on
Android, Apple iOS, Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows,
The reason people don't switch to Linux is that support for new users
SUCKS. You'd think that, after 20+ years of Unix-based software,
there'd be a plethora of "How to Dump Windows And Switch To [version]
Linux!" websites. There are not. Instead, plenty of Windows users who
try to switch discover "I have installed this new OS.... and my wifi
doesn't work." Or their audio doesn't work. Or they try to install WINE
so they can use the apps they need for work, and it doesn't work. Or
they try to play games and discover that Steam-for-Linux and
Steam-via-WINE have two different feature sets, and one of them doesn't
work for their favorite game. And so on.
(I have two adult daughters who have switched from Windows to Linux.
They both hate Windows. Neither has strong software requirements. Both
occasionally have to wipe their system and reinstall the OS because
they can't figure out how to fix the odd problems that show up.
...Neither of them has work-related content or settings that would be
destroyed by a reinstall.)
I am on Windows because I'm a power user of several apps with no Linux
versions: Acrobat Pro, InDesign, MS Word, FineReader (you've probably
never heard of it, and that's very reasonable). I'm a regular user of
other programs with no Linux versions. And seeing the nightmares my
kids have had with using WINE does not make me happy at the idea of
switching. (I'm aware that there's LibreOffice and other free software
that cover most of what Word does. They don't cover everything that
Word does, and they won't cover the 25% extra time it'll take me to
find everything for a few months while I get used to them. A big part
of my job is "Hey here is a document; it's got [list of problems]; fix
those and get it back to me within an hour before the client meeting."
I can't do that on unfamiliar software.) I do a lot in PowerPoint, not
because I like PPT (nobody who has actual editing experience likes
PPT), but because the company does a lot with PPT. And opening
word/ppt/excel/etc files in non-MS programs sometimes has weird results
- changes the hidden formatting features, and so on. So they'd look
fine to me, and I hand them back, and they discover the fonts have
changed or the images have moved around.
Anyway. If you want free software to be more popular, find a way to
make it easy to switch for people with decent awareness of technology
and no command-line experience. I can pick up command-line work - when
I started learning computers, there was nothing else - but there are no
simple guides for "so now you're using Linux; here's the two-page
cheatsheet for Ubuntu/Gnome/Mint/whatever."
You can usually search Google or DDG for "here's my error message; how
do I fix it?" And the answers are often on StackExchange or similar -
and they are often hostile and condescending enough that I am never,
ever going to ask for Linux help for specific problems in public. The
result is: I'm using proprietary software with an unknown amount of
data harvesting, that sometimes changes or removes the features I rely
on - but I'm not being regularly insulted (or threatened) by sexist
jerks who think I'm an idiot for not having encountered this problem
before.
I asked myself: Why do people choose convenience over freedom?
The simple, quick answer is "I see you don't have children of your
own." All of human history has been a matter of giving up some freedoms
in exchange for convenience. It has always been possible for almost
anyone to go off alone and survive by scrounging or potentially even
farming. There are exceptions - some types of slavery, most prisoners,
etc. But for most of history, most people have been free to pick a
direction and walk until nobody else is in range. Unsurprisingly, most
of of them choose to remain in contact with others, which means giving
up some autonomy for the convenience of a community.
If you mean, "why do people choose this particular convenience over a
freedom I believe is readily available" - then you have to get into the
details. Because a freedom that looks obvious and simple to you may not
be as apparent - or as easy - to someone else.
I have a theory that it's a combination of
social pressure and coorporate brainwashing,
Humans are social critters. We thrive in communities. All communities
involve giving up freedoms. There is no brainwashing involved in
"convince people to go along with the group instead of following their
every impulse"; that's the socialization that begins in infancy. (The
end result is: we get communities so that a broken leg doesn't mean
death, so that children live past the age of two, so that we can eat
something other than raw fruit in season and meat cooked on sticks over
a fire. And, y'know, so we can have books and houses and chat with
people in other countries, but those aren't why we have communities;
they're just some of the more recent benefits.)
There are corporations taking advantage of that, and warping our social
drives for profit, to the long-term detriment of both communities and
the planet. But the problem isn't "people are prone to accept
whatever's easiest and go along with the crowd."
My family has been to the US in 2013. One of my biggest negative
impressions was that health care was terrifyingly expensive.
A ride in the ambulance costs 10 dollars on
average in Shanghai, but thousands in ths US. (Note that by "the
US", I
am referring to the state I was in, I do hope that there are saner
ones.)
There are not; the US medical industry's costs are absolutely shocking
to most of the rest of the world. An ambulance trip in the US can run
thousands of dollars even with good insurance; there are no states
where that's not true. Some states are somewhat better about medical
costs - or rather, some states regulate who pays for the costs better -
but the costs are still being set by profit-seeking insurance companies
rather than having anything to do with the actual cost of services.
For a government to be able to handle social needs, it must not be
corruputed.
[citation needed]
...can you name some non-corrupt governments as examples?
This is important. Listing problems with a government is easy. If the
solution were simple, we wouldn't have these problems. Even with as
much as the current people in power will fight to maintain that - if
there were a simple solution that resulted in better living for
everyone, that didn't result in thousands of small-to-medium disasters
(at a minimum) during a transition phase, we'd have put it into place.
That doesn't mean I think improvement is impossible, just that it's not
a matter of "swap this government system for that other one, and things
will be better immediately and much better in the long term."
For example: Copyright, trademark, and patent laws are currently
horrible, and causing a lot of damage. However, just removing them
wouldn't help - that'd just mean that mega-corporations could use
anyone's work to make profit for themselves without paying for it. It'd
mean a return to private patronage and extensive contracts involved
before you can read a book or watch a movie.... and ordinary citizens
would not be the ones with the advantage in that situation. (...What I
want is an end to the Berne convention, copyright dropped to about
25-30 years automatic, and requiring registration & growing fees to
extend it. $100 US for the next 10 years, in the US - a nominal fee
that covers registration costs. $1000 for 10 years past that: you have
to still be making money to bother. $10,000 for every ten years past
that - if Disney wants to keep Snow White in its control, it can do so,
but they have to pay the public to keep the monopoly. And that's per
work, not per franchise: Every episode of Star Trek would need to be
registered and extended.)
Theories such as the separation of powers exist, but in
contemperory times, implementations such as the US have
sometimes-corrupt but almost always ineffective governments.
On the one hand: yes, I get that.
On the other: cars do not regularly run people over on the sidewalk in
my neighborhood. The wiring in my house does not cause fires. The food
I buy at local restaurants does not poison me. My neighbors do not burn
tires for heat in the winter. The water in my kitchen sink is safe to
drink. And for all the gun violence in my local area, nobody sits on
their front porch and does target practice on other human beings. My
family's doctors do not demand intimate favors in exchange for health
care services.
My government has a lot of flaws, but it also has successfully provided
enough safety regulations that I can be comfortable enough to criticize
it.
I don't mean, "we should just celebrate the good that governments have
done." I mean that saying "it's horribly corrupt; we should throw it
out" needs to start with an awareness of the thousands of small
benefits that laws have brought. Any anarchist/libertarian "free
community" needs to first decide, "can you burn waste in your backyard?
If so, what kinds; if not, who's going to enforce that rule?" ...Will
you have private land ownership, and if so, can you cut down all the
trees on "your" land? Can you throw waste into "your" river?
...Can you have a business selling heroin to teenagers? How about
alcohol? Tobacco? Caffeine?
What toxins are acceptable to sell to anyone, which are restricted, and
which are forbidden? Who decides, and who enforces those rules?
I am firmly in favor of free software. I would like to see governments
be required to use free, open-source software for government purposes -
to not be beholden to any business or company for essential government
functions. (Or even optional government functions.) But I am aware that
the visible government--currently-elected legislators--is a small
portion of a complex system, and that there is no possible simple,
sweeping reform that will fix the current batch of problems (and there
are so, so many problems) without bringing in a host of others. And I
am not so sanguine as to trust the people who say "eh, we'll deal with
those when they come up."
if you want to build a government that's free-and-equal, start by
talking to single mothers with kids under 5 years old, and asking what
they need from a government. Design a system that works for them, and
you'll have a foundation that can be extended to support any size of
community.
(Sorry this has gotten rather far from "free software" discussion. I
think it does all tie together - one of the reasons free software has
problems catching on, is corporate influence over governments, so the
very structure of government is part of the discussions. But it does
wind up getting pretty far from "why can't schools just use Linux-based
laptops?")
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[9]https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discus
s
References
1. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
2. https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10
3.
https://www.gq.com/story/the-libertarian-utopia-thats-just-a-bunch-of-white-guys-on-a-tiny-island
4.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-libertarian-experiment-america-215313/
5.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
6.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voyage-satoshi-cryptocurrency-cruise-ship-seassteading
7. https://cryptoland.is/
8. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
9. https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
- A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, Andrew Yu, 2022/01/10
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, Paul Sutton, 2022/01/10
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, Andrew Yu, 2022/01/12
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, Jean Louis, 2022/01/19
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, Andrew Yu, 2022/01/21
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, Jean Louis, 2022/01/21
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, Andrea Laisa, 2022/01/12
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society,
Erica Frank <=
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, vidak, 2022/01/13
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, Andrew Yu, 2022/01/21
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, Jean Louis, 2022/01/21
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, Erica Frank, 2022/01/21
- Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society, Jean Louis, 2022/01/23
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