🚀 go-pugleaf

Maciej Stachowiak defends libertarianism

>> A self-contradictory ideology:
>>
>> (1) it needs an immensely strong collective will to be enforced, yet
>>     it negates all collective values.

>Why does it need a "collective will"? All it needs is a
>constitutionally limited government and a society with a sufficient
>proportion of individuals who support minimal government out of
>whatever personal values they have.

Where do the strong personal values come from?  On reasoning based on
the common good?  That would be collectivist and evil.  On The Market?
Probably.  But given that The Market leads to a very uneven distribution of
wealth, it will probably probably generate only 10% support rate for
libertarianism.  10% is sufficient for dictatorship, not for democracy.
This forces libertarians to harbor sympathy for Pinochet and his kind.

>> (2) it declares certain individualistic values holy and is cynical about
>>     everything else.  it is for rigid moralists without morals.	

>Ethical Egoism is a form of morality too. Not that all libertarians
>are Ethical Egoists - I know Christian libertarians, Utilitarian
>libertarians, etc.

Utilitarianism and Libertarianism belong to the same school.  Their concern
is to
(1) debunk existing collective values as masked self-serving corporativism
(2) find some source of absolute morality without any collectivist reasoning
Christians should better not adhere to this school, because they have a much
more differentiated God than have the U.s and L.s, who are basically
materialists looking for a replacement of God.

>> (3) while professing to worship The Market and The Evolution, libertarians
>>     need a strong-armed state to build an artificial concept of intellectual
>>     property.

>Who says (all) libertarians believe in state-enforced intellectual
>property? I sure don't. I think the only form of intellectual property
>should be trade secrets, as enforced by private contracts.

This is at least consistent.  But it pushes you toward an even more extreme
position.  Market economy already being incompatible with informational
intangibilities, you remove those artificial constructs that have kept it
working.

>> (4) market economics works for the distribution of tangible goods.  It doesn't
>>     produce OpenSource information, nor most of the other values that make
>>     society (and the individuals in it) thrive.

>A market does not have to involve money. Read any basic econ textbook
>(doesn't matter if it's Chicago School or Keynesian or whatever) and
>you will see that all human interactions, even love and marriage, can
>be seen in economic terms. Whether or not markets are the most

Yes, economists explain everything in market terms, biologists in terms
of genes, chemists in forms of atoms etc.  You can always reduce, but you
get to an area where you just dilute your terms, making them mean everything
and nothing.

>efficient allocators of all goods is a point of controversy. I believe
>they are, and the tangibility of goods involved is not relevant. No
>form of central planning can possibly absorb and react to information
>as fast as a market. Creating intellectual property is a
>service. Markets can deal with services just fine.

Didn't you say you are against IP?
If you mean trade secrets, how is creating them a service?
If you mean open source programs (which is what we are talking about here),
how is creating them a point-to-point service between a service provider
and a paying customer (which is what market economy is about)?

>> No matter what scheme you choose, you will have a hard time making it perform
>> as poorly as The Market in informational matters.

>I have yet to see why the market (as opposed to state distortions like
>patent and copyright law) is in any way inadequate for information. It
>works fine for everything else.

Didn't you say that trade-secret is the appropriate scheme for creating 
information values that can get a reward from the Market?  Secrecy is
inadequate for software, which is what OSS is about.  Moreover, the Market
is a scheme of reward for point-to-point value transfers, not for
point-to-public value transfers.

>> Here is what I would propose:
>> Start out from a well documented public bid system, make everything
>> documentation driven.

>Do you mean that the government requests bids for the production of
>specific pieces of software and different contractors compete? Or that
>any individual may place such a request? I don't understand.

Yes, a peer review system similar to that of science, but incorporating
the experiences of open source software.

>> Managment from above through a credible institution like the FSF, as long as
>> it maintains its credibility.

>How could management from above conceivably work any better for
>information than it has for material goods and most services, where it
>has proven to be an utter failure time and time again?

It has proven to be a success time and time again, if you look at science,
public infrastructure and many other examples.  Markets have proven a
relative failure, if you look at these areas and at software.  In the area
of open-source information, it is hard for any system to perform worse than
The Market.

Of course I am also afraid
of generating buraucracie and I proposed some checks and balances against it:

>> Control from below through a peer review system in which anyone can vote who
>> passes examinations to prove that he has understood the relevant 
>> documentation.

>I am firmly opposed to allocation of any taxpayer funds by a
>government-certified elite. Let the people choose how to allocate
>their resources for themselves.

As I wrote below:  "let the people choose" is a slogan that favors the
corrupt few, transferring power from an open decision process to
behind-the-scenes manipulators:

>> This is as democratic as one can get in practise.  Just "substituting the
>> incompetent many for the corrupt few" (B.Shaw) just won't work.  I am not
>> speaking here about universal elections but about a specialised
>> administrative area where a check against abuse of administrative power is
>> needed.  The "incompetent many" are incapable of providing a balance, rather
>> they are capable of making power slide away from the administrators into
>> the hands of some private opinion manipulators, just another group of
>> "corrupt few".

--
Hartmut Pilch
http://www.a2e.de/phm/