Linux As a Model For a New Government? 509
An anonymous reader writes "The hedge fund investor who prided himself on achieving 1000% returns, Andrew Lahde, wrote a goodbye letter to mark his departure from the financial world. In it, he suggests people think about building a new government model, and his suggestion is to have someone like George Soros fund a new government that brings together the best and brightest minds in a manner where they're not tempted by bribery. In doing so, he refers to how Linux grows and competes with Microsoft. An open source government. How would such a system work, and could it succeed? How long before it became corrupt? Would it need a benevolent dictator (Linus vs. Soros)?"
How long before it became corrupt? (Score:5, Insightful)
How long does it take to make a phone call?
A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of their proposals seem to be based on the idea of some sort of dictator, with everyone's best interests in mind. I'm sure like communism it might work well in theory.
Democracy is basic open source government. You get what you put in. Adding in a republic aspect allows you to have some higher level maintainers to keep things orderly and to occasionally make unpopular decisions for the good of the project. Yes, it's potentially open to corruption, but as long as the democratic process itself isn't corrupted, repairs can be made.
Nothing would change... (Score:3, Insightful)
... there would be illicit "code" sharing with interns and staffers, killing of wives and ex-wives. And then there would be religious differences (devil worshippers and penguin followers) and we would be polarized into two parties once again: The Penguins and the Little-Red-Devils.
The more we try to change, the more we stay the same.
And ultimately, who do appoint as our "constitution-kernel" manager to approve any constitution-kernel amendment-patches?
I propose a new driver... a pro-choice driver that does not pass moral judgement over others.
Fork. (Score:5, Insightful)
And which one to choose, there are so many! Would it be possible to try each fork on my family first in a sort of LiveGOV program instead of committing to one particular fork of the government?
Too Late... (Score:4, Insightful)
We are already about to have a government bought and paid for by Soros
Idiotic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fork. (Score:3, Insightful)
There was a serious threat that the government was going to fork. Then they switched to a distributed VCS, everything went better, and world hunger ended.
Until, of course, the next week, when a brand new flamewar erupted on the mailing list.... the mix of politics and free and open source philosophy and development styles... it was just inevitable...
We already have governments that operate that way. (Score:2, Insightful)
We already have governments that operate that way, it's called communism.
Re:Nothing would change... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well for one thing, it has to be paid for..... (Score:5, Insightful)
... but even now as we pay taxes, we should be telling the government what we want them to spend it on.
This way any election of persons "running' the government can at worse just bias such usage rather then run us into the ground with misusing your taxes and leaving us low and wet with no retirement or healthcare.
Someone said to me, when I suggested we tell the government "for the people by the people" how to spend our taxes, that the constitution of the US says we do not have the right to question how the government spends our taxes.
I agreed and said we will not question them, we will instead tell them how to use it.
The Linux ideal was applied when this country was first started, "for the people by the people" and reason, specific reasons, given is found in the "Declaration of Independence."
As an example of Government Abuse today, if you genuinely uphold the "Declaration of Independence" you WILL BE LABELED A TERRORIST and put of list of such people!
Idealist have great ideas that shouldn't be used (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure that sounds great, but how are you really going to place qualified people into government positions? Open elections? We're having troubles putting competent people into the White House as is, and that's with the assistance of an 'enlightened' electoral college. The USSR tried something similar with Soviets and a Benevolent Dictator but when their economic system collapsed, their government fell too.
The best solution falls along the lines of (1) choosing a government system that is hard to corrupt and easy to flush when corruption/evil is found and (2) educating the public to understand how the system works and how to identify corruption. I guess you can say the same reasons that corruption exists in any government is the same reasons why the world still uses Windows: the end user doesn't understand the system, they believes whoever tells them what they want to hear, and doesn't really want to sweat the details.
they have that in China, Cuba, and elsewhere (Score:2, Insightful)
A "benevolent dictator" is usually not benevolent, except in his own mind. Even if he is, he usually becomes less so over time as pressure builds to show results for society.
You can bet that he will act as a dictator when someone outside his circle proposes changes, though.
Good luck with your job search.
It would have similar flaws to our current Govt. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this seems like a bit of a silly, not well thought out argument. Most discussions of open source that I've been a part of trumpet it as a more "democratic" process, meaning that open source mimics the current US government more than the government should mimic open source.
Now this will likely cause a flood of comments declaring our current government as broken, and not democratic. It is fine if you think that, but if you are going to rant about a problem, you darn well better have a better solution. and if you're thinking of improving the voting process (a good place to start) you may want to check out Arrow's Impossibility Theorem [wikipedia.org] which states that no voting system can possibly be fair to everyone.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:3, Insightful)
but as long as the democratic process itself isn't corrupted, repairs can be made.
I guess we're fucked then......
might not completely worked (Score:5, Insightful)
The last time we tried to fork the US, it didn't work too well. But actually, I do think that this could be the germ of a new idea, experimental modes of government in test communities. People will argue the pro's and con's back and forth but until the theories have been put to the test, it's just speculation. The only problem I've seen is that when a bad idea is proven to be such in a proper experiment, the true believers won't say the idea was flawed, it simply was not applied with enough vigor. We're thus back where we started, only the true believers are crazier for it.
The thing I keep coming back to is that rigidly hierarchical models of direction and control were necessary in the pre-computer age. Just imagine trying to keep up with documents and records when they're all held on sheets of paper in real folders in real file drawers, just imagine trying to communicate with someone when long-distance communication is just scratchy phone lines and letters. It makes sense to concentrate all of the command and control in one place and issue orders from there, capital cities, corporate HQ's and all.
With modern telecommunications, it will be easier to push the brains of the organization out to the periphery. Just drawing from my own experience, I've worked in several different corporate environments starting with food services, then telecommunications, then a mixture of small and big shops for computers and financial services. The thing that really struck me about the chain stores is that they took away the initiative from the store manager. A place could not vary from corporate standard and while this sets a base line of acceptable quality, nobody was allowed to rise above that level, either. What also happened is that management refused to accept feedback from the stores, the front lines of the business, so when they tried to implement stupid ideas, they never got the feedback that it wasn't working; either they didn't ask for it or wouldn't listen.
Just talking about restaurants, the strength of the traditional franchise is national brand recognition, expensive marketing and research efforts to develop products for the menu, and a proven formula for success that simply needs to be adopted and adhered to. Of course, this also means that you'll often get crap. If I compare the local Denny's with the local breakfast and lunch place, there's no comparison, the local mom and pop kicks the shit out of Denny's and their "real breakfast" bullshit. Of course, Denny's gets huge advantages of scale with purchasing, etc.
What I think would be interesting is if the mom and pops could create co-ops to do the same thing nation-wide. "Look, we're all individuals but together we represent a thousand restaurants. We promise to buy in this quantity at these prices, and if anyone drops out, the rest of the members will pick up the slack." Very hard to do 30 years ago but with computers these days, should be far easier.
When I was a kid, the strength of the capitalist versus communist economies was described as demand versus command. Command economies tried to decide everything from the capital city and they really had no clue how many paperclips were needed, would set unrealistic production goals and would never have the right amount. A demand economy places the paperclip decision at the level of the people buying the paperclips and the people making the paperclips -- a better understanding of the need for paperclips helps limit the production to just as much as is necessary. This decentralizes the bureaucracy.
Can the same thing be done at the federal level? Break the monolithic agencies into smaller "franchises" with the same goal but offices spread throughout the nation, all following the same game plan but fully cognizant of what's going on at the front lines? Can we bring back a meritocracy where the successful succeed and the failures go away? That used to be the strength of the western capitalist economies but now we allow such concentration of resources in oversized companies that are "too big to fail" that we've arrived at the same inefficiencies as the communist nations.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm sure like communism it might work well in theory.
And Capitalism too. Or hadn't you been paying attention these past few weeks?
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia has proven time and time again that "openness" will be corrupted just as easily as anything else.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Under the sea (Score:2, Insightful)
all the current places already have governments. they need a new country for their new government.
I vote they build a city under the sea - somewhere all the existing governments can't get their hands on.
They'll need to bring in all the best scientists, artists, doctors and engineers in as well - I think it'd be important for them to bring in geneticists to help develop new DNA sciences in this new place so that they can build a better, newer world, no?
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:-1, Insightful)
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:2, Insightful)
On the topic of capitalism:
Have you ever noticed how people gasp and look at you strange the moment you mention anarchy?
Capitalism is essentially economic anarchy. If it's good enough for our money, what's to stop it from being good enough for us?
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source is a much closer model for no government - or, in other words, anarchy. The last few years have been pretty clear to me that democracy doesn't produce government that works in the people's best interest. A linux model for government would allow people to choose how to organize themselves on a voluntary basis. Government, even the democratic version, rests on the application of force. So the two ideals really are mutually exclusive.
Re:Idiotic (Score:3, Insightful)
This has been a strong belief amongst geeks for a very long time, if you were around the culture (or visiting Slashdot) during the dot com era you know it was worse then. In summary: I can program a computer to do rocket science, therefore I can do rocket science.
Flip through RMS's writing to see the scope of subjects he was compelled to expound upon and know that before he turned against the hivemind geeks lapped up every single essay like a cat does milk. Dude, if he is smart enough to write The Cathedral and the Bazaar he must be smart enough to tell us how to bang our girlfriends.
So Slashdot taking this guy's suggestion seriously shouldn't be a surprise at all. We have a software development model that more or less works, we like it a lot anyway, so lets apply it in doublecoats to every unrelated aspect of our lives. Lets not worry that it can be and has been perverted to ratify the will of one small group over that of everyone else. Lets not worry that as a whole the model produces ridiculous levels of inefficiency that economies dealing in tangible raw materials aren't going to be able to stand. Lets not worry that it is a fucking software development model, no more no less.
So lets develop government like we do software so we can each choose from 140 different ones like we do Linux distros. Meanwhile, the actual government (we'll call it MS for this example) will continue to find ways to get me to continue to rely on it in some small way, which means it'll have to keep finding new and inventive ways to get me to pay its MS tax. Or maybe it won't have to think up new ways because it has the market cornered on rifles.
Stop thinking about systems, think about people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually its just a deregulated economy that only works well in theory well that and the trickle down economy. capitalism works well in practice (or did until the idea that people could just invent money anyway)
Re:Stop thinking about systems, think about people (Score:3, Insightful)
Except the people are all under working under a set of rules to achieve something. The system is what puts this into place. If people don't believe in the system(and in turn the rules and goals) they're working for, they will do what they believe is best which might be different than the 'system'.
Extreme example: Capitalism vs Communism. They each have different systems in place to achieve their ends. If the people don't agree with the end goal, doesn't make them necessarily bad or good but they will do the most in their power to undermind that end goal.
Broken summary (Score:3, Insightful)
After for once reading the article (very interesting let me tell you) it'd seem that the summary is a bit off course.
Adrew Lahde talks about the need for George Soros (or alike) to fund or start a forum that'd discuss a new form of Goverment/economics, that could grow in the sense of Linux (one guy starts it up, other start contributing).
He does not want Linus or Soros to run a country. He wants people like Soros (anyone with loads of money) to help wise people (not necessarily oil owners) to think about a new world order past capitalism.
He also talks about number of different good ideas which should be put in play.
Re:Fork. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would not just say it's the far right. There are plenty of centrists such as myself who happen to own firearms and hunt would are very wary of Soros. He gives a lot of money to gun control organizations and would strip us of our current rights.
I wouldn't want to live in a country Soros was running.
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No "good" government (Score:5, Insightful)
Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at the
University of Edinburgh) had this to say about 'the fall of
the Athenian Republic' some 2,000 years prior.
'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply
cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy
will continue to exist up until the time that voters
discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from
the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority
always votes for the candidates who promise the most
benefits from the public treasury, with the result that
every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal
policy, [which is] always followed by a dictatorship.
'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations
from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.
During those 200 years, these nations always progressed
through the following sequence:
'From bondage to spiritual faith;
'From spiritual faith to great courage;
'From courage to liberty;
'From liberty to abundance;
'From abundance to complacency;
'From complacency to apathy;
'From apathy to dependence;
'From dependence back into bondage.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:2, Insightful)
You actually think a two party system is a democracy? Sadly, we are only allowed to vote for the already chosen, and that makes it undemocratic.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that has much more to do with the fact that people get the government they deserve, rather than failings in democracy per se. Most Americans no longer know, or have any desire to know, economics, civics, how their government works, or even their own history. They then run out and vote like the uneducated idiots they are, voting for whoever "looks most presedential" or "has promised them x" (pretty much whoever schmoozes best or promises most). Americans have been lazy and lately have not placed much priority on these basic educational building blocks, and are now getting the government they deserve. We, as Americans, are largely idiots en masse, so is it any wonder our leaders are all idiots en masse as well? One could argue that our democracy is working exactly as it should be, as it is supposed to be a representative form of government, and it is uncomfortably representative at the moment. In America, when our government starts to suck, we should really turn inward and examine ourselves, because our government is a pretty good mirror reflecting our own failings as individuals.
And as for the whole application of force thing, anarchy will be government by force. Whoever is strongest will come along and either kill you or control you. To use the linux analogy, you will be like a process that voluntarilly used the nice command on itself, and is trying to get along and give other processes their fair share priority. And other not so nice processes will take the CPU, and will choose not to let you run again.
This is why the nice command does nothing in modern unix OS's: if you count on the processes to work together and get organized, some greedy process will come along and spoil it for everyone. Therefore, we now have a scheduler that ignores niceness and uses force to give every process its basic rights.
Force trying to take away rights is always with us. If you don't overcome it with a stronger force that gives rights, you will become its slave.
Bad Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Direct Democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
That's just one funny example to enforce my belief in Representative Democracy as we know it, even in places like Switzerland.
It takes some above average people to take risks in The Peoples name because they can see light where the average man just sees the horizon.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism is essentially economic anarchy. If it's good enough for our money, what's to stop it from being good enough for us?
Because capitalism is pretty brutal. When a company isn't doing well, it goes bankrupt (unless you count socialist bailouts, but that's not capitalism).
It doesn't work that well when you expand it beyond economics. Under a complete anarchy, if your neighbor likes your big screen TV, but can't afford it? He'll just walk right into your house and take it, there's no police to stop him, no laws to enforce. He spends his free time lifting weights and you're a nerd. He's going to win that battle.
Now you and your nerd friends can agree on a protection pact where you help one another in defense duties. That might work, but everyone will still be in constant battle, looking over their shoulders. That's pretty much like what companies do, keeping on eye on their competitors, making sure they're not stealing all their customers, adapting their business strategy all the time. Not a suitable way to live when everything and not just business needs to be treated that way.
Besides, that little pact you made with your friends to pool together your resources? I imagine you also created a few rules to be part of your group? We won't steal from one another, we'll provide defense services...maybe you've instituted a little tax so you can buy weapons? That's a really small scale government, which you created because anarchy didn't work for you.
Re:It's not 'openness' that's corrupt ... (Score:1, Insightful)
forking the government model will probably not help what model the government adopts.
Re:Open Source IS the ideal behind democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit.
My point was... (Score:3, Insightful)
Government follows money.
What allows government to be large, centralised and corrupted?
"It's The Money Stupid".
Re:Especially with guys like George Soros at the h (Score:3, Insightful)
"So yeah, I'm exceedingly opposed to letting anyone like Buffett or Soros run anything in the government. They already manipulate it now to their benefit and get rich off tax and bailout bills, so the last thing they need is to be made a "benevolent dictator"."
Soros and buffet are nowhere near in the same league, I've met Mr Soros personally and I can tell you he is not in the same league as your typical billionaire in the slightest. He set up conferences in how the political process of america is manipulated, see here: http://www.linktv.org/programs/orwell_deceiving [linktv.org]
He publishes books constantly criticizing the the deficiencies of the capitalist system. (Just google or search on amazon for his name) and he also funds the soros foundation that has done a hell of a lot of good for people in the world and in america - http://www.soros.org/ [soros.org]
Just because a person is rich doesn't mean that they are all about money, nor does it mean they are perfect. If you've actually watched interviews of Mr Soros or read any of his books and researched into the man, you'd get a much better picture then the superficial version and vague notions that he is just "some greedy rich dude". People should read some of his books and actually research before they smear a man you know nothing about. He is not perfect, but no one is, and since america is all about hyper belief in capitalism. Americans deserve to get the real world capitalism good and hard - they deserve to get the ideals they worship - greed, status, beauty, hyper individualism and being rich, and therefore deserve a bunch of rich people who believe greed is good ruling them.
If the american people want change they should be ignoring the law, outright revolting and going after these people with mob justice. It is astounding how ignorant most people are of history. Oswald spenglers decline of the west should be required reading for every student before they enter the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West [wikipedia.org]
Oswald knew the only thing that can counter greed and oppression of the corruption of the rich is bloodshed and lawless disobedience, like the destruction of property, the intimidation of the corrupt men in the law profession and the corrupt judges, people did this during the depression, but most people today are too comfortable, selfish and individualistic to set aside their differences and fearful for their lives to oust these people. The rich live in a world radically different and sheltered from the real world of the masses and the more distant from this world they become the more myopic and distorted their thinking and vision becomes.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:2, Insightful)
What's interesting is that, like open source, you can do just that now if you want. Organize yourself on a voluntary basis. And just like the internet enabled coordination of people who wouldn't ordinarily know about each other in kernel development, so too can it enable you to organize with others that are of like mind.
The tricky bit is having something useful to be organized for. It's all great to get people together to "do something great" (the cheer of a million dead source forge projects). But to start with a seed of a good idea and actually carry it through -- that's rare.
I hope someone does it, because just like the linux kernel, the person starting such a thing definitely won't be me!
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Only thing being, the U.S. is not a democracy. It's a enfranchised republic.
A true democracy would be something like the annual town meetings held in some places in New England where the entire populace gets together and votes on how they want things to be run over the next year. It's a great concept, and it works on the small scale but it would be far too unwieldy to work for an entire country.
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:4, Insightful)
It didn't work in 1861, why should it work now?
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:5, Insightful)
No implemented perpetuum mobile in existance was close to what self sustained energy source really means. If you're an idealist, a perpetuum mobile is still the best energy source out there, in theory. Unfortunately, it's the hardest to implement in practice.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:5, Insightful)
> Most of their proposals seem to be based on the idea of some sort of dictator, with everyone's best interests in mind.
Of course there are important differences between a project such as Linux and a government.
Linus works as benevolent dictator because:
a) he is a good dictator. Everyone knows a good king is the best form of government, but nobody has ever solved the problem of evsuring a steady supply of good kings.
b) If enough people were to ever decide Linus were a bad dictator that can use the GPL to remove him with a minimum of fuss. In the real world removing a dictator involves a wee bit more effort.
c) Being a highly technical project focused on making the 'best kernel' it is easy to get agreement on most issues since everyone agrees on the meaning of 'best' after a few arguments and benchmark runs. Now consider the socialist/capitalist divide where there is zero agreement as to the definition of a 'good' government. Makes Windows vs Linux a petty squabble.
Not to mention the inescapable fact George Soros is a communist opposed to everything our form of government stands for so anybody who gives that asshole the time of day on the idea of reforming our government should be suspect.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:4, Insightful)
If you take any single slice of American history, you will find rancor, stark disagreement, outright corruption and near-militant partisanship. Right now, though, it seems like at least one side may get a full-fledged parliamentary majority: large House majority, filibuster-proof Senate majority, and a president. Even if you disagree with Democrats, you can agree that those most obviously associated with the President - Republicans - are going to be punished for letting him run us into the ground. If Democrats do the same, it'll be Carter to Reagan all over again.
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux works because if you don't like what Linus is doing you can fork it, or use one of the BSDs, or start your own operating system.
For example when people didn't like what Xfree86 was doing, they forked the code to x.org, and now that's what most people use.
It isn't so easy to fork your government if you don't like what they are doing.
Re:Complete Balkans! (Score:3, Insightful)
the process of breaking up a large country into many smaller ones is often known as "balkanisation". When you do this, you always raise the possibility of trade barriers, and protectionism. these are the single quickest ways to screw up an economy (and to bring down a government). What we need are larger trading areas - with common interests, standards and regulations, not smaller ones.
What big trade needs are larger trading areas with common interests, standards and regulations. What citizens need is smaller trading areas and smaller organizations with less effective power.
Marxism is not ideal (Score:5, Insightful)
Marxism is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an ideal governmental model. It is human nature to want to work for your reward, and to appreciate only things that you've worked for.
Marxism takes this and turns it on it's head. It claims that you should hate work, but that you should do it for the "common good" and that people should have their needs met by society even if they are unable to work.
The only thing I can think of that's more degrading than working for nothing is being paid for nothing. In Marxism, you can only get something by needing it, and no matter how hard you work you can never earn anything. The whole thing is disgusting and degrading on a fundamental level.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:2, Insightful)
Not today's liberalism, which is about giving the government centralized power to dictate how you should live. Liberalism used to be about things like open interpretation of the Constitution in which it is treated as merely a skeleton framework that can be interpreted multiple ways, as opposed to treating it as a rigid, literal framework of government.
Somewhere along the way, goofy hippies took over and turned liberalism into a pseudo-socialist movement so that college kids could latch onto it and make themselves think they're part of some cultural rebellion because they read a Naom Chomsky book. It's about people in urban areas like New York City looking down condescendingly on middle America. I've met people up north who are actually afraid of southern people. All they've ever seen of them is movies in which southerners are racist morons with an accent (if someone has a southern accent in a Hollywood movie, they will always be portrayed as closed-minded in some way). It's the same stereotyping they claim to fight against in racism.
It's become a movement of class warfare in which liberal leaders exploit the emotions of low-income people in order to give themselves more power. One way of doing this is to tell low-income people that they'll tax the wealthy. This taps into a built-in sense of class envy and hatred against the successful, so it brings those liberals votes. Liberals form special interest groups to exploit everything from race (Jesse Jackson will stage protests and boycotts against a company until they hire one of his family members to oversee their "racial diversity") to environmental disaster (claiming the government was racist in its handling of Hurricane Katrina when stats show more white people died anyway, and the rescue response time was the highest it had ever been for a flooded city after a hurricane). They'll tie into anti-capitalist fears to trick people into giving the government more power.
So no, liberalism is not about freedom of the individual. That's what we now call libertarianism. I could go into a spiel about how the religious took over conservatism, but that's off-topic (interestingly, Obama is a Christian who went to Reverend Wright's church for 20 years, and Joe Biden is a Catholic...turns out McCain is the least religious in this election. I just found that funny).
Re:Marxism is not ideal (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't recall who said it first, but to paraphrase somebody:
"From each according to his ability and to each according to his need" defines a system that rewards need and punishes ability.
Ayn Rand (Score:5, Insightful)
That sounds like an Ayn Rand quote to me (I'm pretty sure I read it in Atlas Shrugged), though I'm sure she wasn't the first to say it.
That's a good practical argument, but it's not an idealist's argument. The problem with Marxism is more fundamental than that. It demands that people be something they are not.
I like to work, because I get what I want from it. But a Marxist says that I should work even though I will get nothing. That's a self-loathing, life hating approach to life. It claims that my desire for material things is bad, and I should pretend not to want them. But I want what I want and there's not anything wrong with that. Even if it was bad, I'd rather be the bad person I am than pretend to be a good person I am not.
Re:Direct Democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:5, Insightful)
False!
Wikipedia is a lot of thing, but its governance is not open.
As they say themselves, they are "not an experience in democracy", which in my opinion is the source of all the scandals we've seen lately.
Disagree on the philosophy of Wikipedia? You've got to fight the delete wars.
Disagree with an admin decision on a delete war? You're out of luck.
You're not an admin, so you can only try to convince him when he'll "decide on what the consensus is".
Disagree with Jumbo Wales on anything? You're out. Not only out of luck, but out of Wikipedia, too. Along with your whole IP range, probably.
On the other hand, slashdot would probably be a pretty good model for democracy (when the admins will lose the veto power on what makes first page, at least).
And for those who complain about the noise to signal ratio here? That's democracy for you, guys. Go back to microsoft's forum about microsoft; I heard they make the trains arrive on time.
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:3, Insightful)
It didn't work in 1861, why should it work now?
Unfortunately in our system of government, Congress can vote themselves pay raises, and they are allowed to get money from people and companies to fund their campaigns, etc...
If congress members earned as much as the one guy they hire to work at the DMV in a city of a million people, things would be different. People wouldn't be there for the money and greed.
Of course the citizens being armed and able to overthrow the government when enough citizens get pissed would also help...
Re:Especially with guys like George Soros at the h (Score:3, Insightful)
"This is the same Soros that is funding Moveon.org, hates Bush and his allies with a passion and has funded the democrats before this election to the tune of at least $20-30 million dollars?"
And what was the context of his support? Did you ask or even read about why he did such things? Just saying "he gave money to so and so" without any kind of context on why he did what he did is meaningless ideological smear tactics.
"We're supposed to trust Mr Liberal, there? No thanks."
Again, this betrays any insight or intelligence into the matters at hand. My post didn't say he was a perfect man, but it is obvious you know very little about George soros besides what you want to see in the man. Try meeting him and going through interviews to find out why he did what he did instead of just mindlessly saying "so and so did this", anyone can point fingers and frame facts in such a way to make someone look bad. The real world is more complicated then the black and white fantasy land most conservative and other ideologues live in.
Re:Ayn Rand (Score:5, Insightful)
I like to work, because I get what I want from it.
Psychologists have found that we are at our happiest when working on something that is at our correct level of challenge (not overwhelming or tedious). Actually, video games are this theory in practice.
Most people today distinguish work and play, but they are truly the same thing. The only difference is usually that someone has told you to do "work" and you have chosen to do your hobby (or "play") yourself.
But a Marxist says that I should work even though I will get nothing. That's a self-loathing, life hating approach to life.
Most people we consider "geniuses" worked on things because they found it interesting. They often also used it to make a living. But once their basic needs were met, their goal was to continue the work that interested them. It's not self loathing. It's often self love and love to improve yourself and things.
It claims that my desire for material things is bad, and I should pretend not to want them. But I want what I want and there's not anything wrong with that. Even if it was bad, I'd rather be the bad person I am than pretend to be a good person I am not.
No, it's not "bad". But psychology has shown, time and time again, that once your needs are met, you will be happier if you are working on things that develop you or are part of a cause you believe in. It brings people a satisfied life, where they are happy with themselves and generally happy overall. If you work for material things, you get spikes of happiness followed by low plains of being unsatisfied, bored, frustrated because you want something else, etc.
Re:The solution is so simple that it hurts... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's interesting that we've finally come to a time where people are actually vocally discussing a change of the whole system. That really says something about the magnitude of the changes that are happening.
That said I think you got it quite right about the problem being that humans govern other humans and thus face a conflict of interest.
However I dare to claim that the program you are proposing already exists and is in place and has been for practically ever since humans existed on this planet. That program is indeed open source to the core and completely free for everyone to participate in. It is called THE FREE MARKET.
If the problem is humans governing other humans how about letting human individuals governing ONLY themselves. I govern me and you govern yourself. If you want somebody else to do something for you or believe as you do, do not apply force to make them comply (like the current governments do), but instead use persuasion and other PEACEFUL non-violent means. And if it doesn't work then simply give up. Using violence against another (which current governments unfortunately legitimize, even while forbidding everyone else from doing it, thus taking a monopoly on violence) only results in more violence - violence breeds more violence.
This is not anarchy in the sense most people have been taught to look at anarchy. It is not lawlessness in the same sense either. It is simply a lack of a coercive ruler in place of self-rulers trading both value and ideas between each other on a purely voluntary basis. And it is law that is private where the only universal, and natural, principle to be followed by everyone and at the same time enforced by everyone (right to bear arms for defense) is the principle of non-initiation of force or fraud.
This philosophy is called by varying names: anarcho-capitalism, market anarchy, voluntaryism (because the CORE idea is that all human action should be voluntary, not coerced) etc. It is arguably also the original libertarian idea, although nowadays libertarianism is seen as compromising with coercion and government a bit too much so with respect to that we can call it a subset of libertarianism, or libertarian purism.
Lastly I want to refer anyone who didn't before think this idea through to check out these sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntaryism [wikipedia.org]
http://www.mises.org/ [mises.org]
http://www.lewrockwell.com/ [lewrockwell.com]
http://freedomainradio.com/ [freedomainradio.com] (a fairly popular podcast by a genious market anarchist philosopher Stefan Molyneux which can with great proficiency answer every question you might have about market anarchy).
If you're curious enough that you'd give a book a chance, there's a free one with an audio book available here called "The Market for Liberty": http://freekeene.com/free-audiobook/ [freekeene.com]
It changed my life.
And if you are convinced already or become sufficiently convinced after exploring this, there is good news: a place where free market and liberty stand most chance in the world: New Hampshire, because of a project of moving thousands of liberty minded people to it: http://www.freestateproject.com/ [freestateproject.com]
Thanks for your consideration (and sorry for such a long post, I'm just too passionate about this). I truly hope that instead of worsening conditions for our freedoms, this shift we are seeing happening in the world opens the eyes of people towards the true nature of coercive governance and what freedom truly is).
Float your boat so long as it doesn't sink mine.
Re:Did you read my comment? It wasn't long. (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't give a damn who the fruits of my labor is going to if it's not going to me. I work for me, not for anyone else.
"The fact is, we could probably bring all the poor up to a middle-class standard with very little expenditure on our part."
How? You need to understand that value!=money!=resources these things merely approximate each other. If we took money from rich people and gave it to poor people it would do little to improve their situation because the resources and the value aren't really there. All you'd do is increase the price of housing and basic services. In the end, any benefit to the poor would come at the expense of the middle class (by raising their costs). In the long term, it would hurt everybody, because some of the money you took from the rich was going to be used for new capital investment (to increase available resources in the future and thereby further enrich the wealthy) and now it won't be.
But that's only one part of the practical problem, the other side is that you can't make a poor person wealthy simply by giving them money. It is really easy to spend money, and if you didn't earn it yourself you will have no appreciation of what it's worth. So if you give a beggar a dollar, they will probably waste it. However, if you earn a dollar, you are likely to spend it as efficiently as possible.
"They've conned us into thinking we all can be as successful as they are, if we just work hard enough."
That's stupid, a human is only capable of so much work. Why would you think you could get rich just by working hard? It takes more than that.
"The game is rigged."
Yes, but it's rigged primarily by government intervention.
"In a world with men who are so rich they can't possibly spend all their money, there should be nobody starving."
Why should someone who contributes nothing to society expect to be fed? And if they are fed, will they really appreciate the hard work that others had to do to feed them?