🚀 go-pugleaf

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?

>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 and all forms of collective power.
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!

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

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