🚀 go-pugleaf

From: phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut) wrote:
>Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@mit.edu> writes:
>>
>>I think the proposed system is terrible, DATs should not be taxed at
>>all. Of course, I am a libertarian and believe that what the
>>government does is supposed to protect the rights to life, liberty and
>>property exclusively, even if the citizens might want otherwise.
>
> 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.

> (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.

> (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.

> (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
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.

>
> >Could possibly work for software. Here are a few reasons:
>
> You meant "couldn't", I guess.

You're right, that is what I meant.

>
> I agree with the reasons you give.
> What RMS proposes is very far from perfect.
> It might even lead to plagiarism and, as a reaction against it, code hoarding.
> Still, something similar is practised in most countries in the case of music
> (e.g. the GEMA in Germany collects a tax and distributes it to music authors).
> 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.

> 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.

> 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?

> 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.

> 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".


 - 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"))'