🚀 go-pugleaf

phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut) wrote:
>Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@mit.edu> writes:
>>Producing software does not require as extensive an education as doing
>>science, and doing it for profit has been historically an established
>>practice. Therefore if software were subsidized, its likelihood of
>>attracting profiteers who want to manipulate the subsidies to their
>>own ends would be more like that of agriculture than like that of
>>science, which is mostly full of people who have chosen to devote
>>their lives to non-monetary goals.
>
> Science is also full of people who strive for patents and third-party
> support.  On the other hand, open-source software is currently being created
> for idealistic purposes only.  Or do you know of anyone producing it for
> profit?

Yes. Look at the list of companies at www.opensource.org.

>>If the citizens are represented by means of each deciding exactly what
>>he will fund, that's fine with me. However, if this is not the case,
>>then some citizens are being forced to pay for what other citizens
>>want. This is true under any form of government. Democracy does not
>>have magical moral properties - the tyranny of the majority is still a
>>tyranny. There is no meaningful way to let the citizens decide other
>>than to let each citizen decide individually.

> Here you are arguing against all taxation 

Definitely.

> and all forms of collective power.

No. I support state use of retaliatory force.

>In other words: unless we advocate your brand of anarcho-capitalism, a
>1% software tax is the way to go.  Thanks for supplying the arguments!

I hate to use such language, but that is the most bullshit argument I
have ever heard. I argued "if A then B" and asserted "A", you assert
"not A" and claim that "B" is the logical conclusion. There are many
other arguments against a software tax including from other theories
of ethics or politics than mine.

Also, I am not an anarcho-capitalist, I am a minarchist libertarian. I
believe in a minimal state, not no state at all.

> The basic flaw of your view is that you seem to be looking for something to
> ascribe "magical moral properties" to. 

No, I don't believe anything has any "magical moral properties". The
market is morally neutral in itself. Only human actions have moral
significance. I do not claim the results of the market are "moral",
only that initiating force against someone who is not violating the
rights of others is immoral, and a fully free market is the only
situation in which it is even possible for this not to happen.

> And you find a very tyrannic deity,
> the Market.  This God constantly forces me to pay for software I don't want.
> He locks me into Windows, MacOS, PageMaker, QuarkExpress.  Although I hate
> working with these programs, I have to buy them, because the condottieri of
> vendor-lock software marketing have conquered the infosphere and collect
> taxes there. 

You can choose to access those portions of the infosphere that do not
require this software. If there were a tax on hardware for free
software development, those who did not want to use free software but
_did_ want to use a computer would not have this choice.

Besodes, you are making an excellent argument against any kind of
democratic allocation of funds here, it is the majority that freely
decided they wanted to use these products. It is true that the more
these products are deployed, the more utility there is to anyone else
who acquires them; but that would be true of non-commercial software
as well.


> Without any democratic legitimation.  This is why their side
> has to argue against democracy.  Democracy is not "magically moral", but
> it is not as utterly immoral as informational capitalism.

Any decision forced by one person upon another is immoral. Markets do
not use force. Many people do not believe this, dredging out examples
like "But if I want to do Y, the easiest way is to pay X for Z!"
That's not force. You still have a choice of not doing Y, or of
finding another way to acquire a substitute for Z (barring patents
with no "independent discovery" defense which are patently evil, if
you will pardon the pun).

 - Maciej Stachowiak

-- 
guile -c '(define c call-with-current-continuation)(define(f s)(lambda(o)(let
((n(c(lambda(x)(o x)x))))(let p((n n)(l(string->list s)))(cond((not (null? l)
)(display(car l))(p(c n)(cdr l))))))))((f"Js nte ul akr")(f"utAohrGieHce\n"))'