Slashdot Mirror

Webhosting provider boycotting Drupal over this. (Scroll down to red text.) Anyone else? I'll certainly never use their software again.

martin-manley.eprci.com.

First they'd have to figure out how to establish personal and territorial jurisdiction over someone living in New Hampshire who committed the allegedly criminal acts (of creating email addresses) well outside of California.

Even if they can do that, then they'd need to decide if extraditing someone across 3,000+ miles for "breach of the peace" or some other silliness is worth it. I don't remember all the details of the uniform extradition act, but basically a sheriff in the receiving state has to transport the person, or at least pay for the whole affair.

And if they get through all of that, they get to prosecute someone who has spent the past five years as a full-time, essentially "professional" liberty activist (1, 2, 3) who, among other things, fights petty criminal charges in court all the time---a couple of my own, and I've assisted several other activists here.

So, bring it on. If I were afraid of the thugs I wouldn't've made my initial post, now would I?

The term for this is "punishing success." Create a technology that's too successful and pretty soon people will call to have it stolen from you for the "public good." And naturally they will mask their naked desire for such theft with terms like "sharing."

Note that I don't support software patents---I don't support the idea of patents, or "intellectual property", at all. But so long as we're going to have the government pointing its guns around at people, protecting businesses' intellectual assets as if they're real property, the idea of selective enforcement of patents, especially based on criteria like this, is even more repugnant than "IP" itself.

So! I hope Google will be equally as cheerful when the government comes in and wrenches all of their technologies away from them because they've become so ubiquitous! I mean, if there's anything "everyone" uses on the Internet nowadays that ought to be "shared," it's Google search, right?

My idea of freedom is intellectually and ethically consistent, based on the "Non-Aggression Principle" and the concept of self-ownership. My idea of freedom says that everyone is absolutely the owner of themselves, and anything they legitimately produced or acquired ("private property"), and they can do whatever they want with themselves, or their property, so long as they're not violating anyone else's right to self-ownership or their own property.

Your idea of freedom is simpl thaty your side gets to say who gets to point the government's guns and who's doing the pointing---today at least. Your idea of freedom seems to be that your idea of freedom gets imposed on others regardless of their own wishes, simply because your faction is in control of the government (today, at least).

Your parents consented to it for you when they either gave birth to you ...

A hereditary obligation? You just described feudalism.

Not at all - you were too young to decide, so they decided, either actively or by default, for you. Had I considered it an hereditary obligation, I wouldn't have suggested that you leave the country.

If you wish to no longer be bound by that contract, I suggest you leave the country, forfeit the priveleges of the civilized society that has already given you countless advantages and protections without which you would likely be destitute or dead, and find some place else in the world to hang out with other 'rugged individualists'. Good luck with that.

Thanks! Many of us are doing almost exactly what you suggest!

In all seriousness this time, good luck to you. I truly hope your utopia is a success; however, history would suggest that it won't succeed, and I really think you're ignoring a huge amount of psychological, sociological, and bahavioral complexity which will make your peace 'n' freedom loving society far, far different from the vision you currently have of it. And I'm pretty sure those differences will not be to your liking, 'cause your new society will soon look pretty much like the one you're attempting to leave.

PS I used to be a Randroid too, and once upon a time I would have agreed with you. Then I grew up, attained some sophistication, discovered empathy, and got a clue.

So thieving from people at gunpoint is what you call "empathy"? Well, I guess it's not you who do the actual thievery: You let the U.S. Government and their bureaucrats point the guns, steal other people's wealth, and then redistribute it down to you using an immense, multi-tiered bureaucracy of state, federal, and local agencies. That must be the "sophistication" part! :)

"Steal other people's wealth"? Well, a lot of that wealth was itself effectively stolen - enter Ragnar Danneskjold, I guess. Do you really believe that the wealth concentrated in such places as Hollywood, the recording industry, and yes, the high-tech sector, was obtained without the use of force or fraud? Surely you aren't that naive.

"At gunpoint"? Yes, that's ultimately true. So let's look at your alternative. Suppose I'm in your utopia, and I claim an unclaimed piece of land. I drill for oil, find some, and start pumping. Only my oil operation, with its noise, smells, and deadly hydrogen sulphide emissions, interferes with your ability to enjoy and make use of your adjacent land for farming. How will this dispute be resolved?

At this point a typical Randian will spout dogma - ' there are no conflicts of interest among rational men'. When pressed farther, - 'but which party prevails?' - the Randian asserts that, because the two parties are reasonable and rational, the dispute will simply be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Assuming for the moment that this is true, who decides what is rational? Rand wrote a lot of philosophical hooey, (rhymes with Toohey), about such things being absolutes, but they're demonstrably NOT absolutes. And even if you can somehow determine an absolute 'rational' answer, how will you guarantee that the parties involved remain 'rational'? Rand herself was highly irrational - she continued to smoke, and defended it as "a symbol of the fire in the mind", long after it was conclusively proved that smoking leads to the lung cancer which she ultimately suffered from. If the originator of your faith, (you deny that it's a faith and you hate that word, but it really is a faith), was unable to b

1) Should the people of an advanced civilization that includes core values of compassion and respect develop means to systematically decrease the suffering of its less fortunates?
        - I believe it should.

I do not see how a system that forces people into handing over their money at the point of a gun, or the threat thereof, in order to help others, can be described as "compassionate" or "respectful." "Vicious" might be a more appropriate term.

2) Can we rely on individuals, rather than systems, to reliably, and without discrimination, provide that means to decrease suffering?
        - I do not believe so, regrettably.

Based on what evidence? Up until the early 1900s, providing for the needy was handled by a vast number of private charities, churches, mutual aid societies, fraternal orders, service organizations, and the like. This was all destroyed by the U.S. Government using the competitive advantage that rampant theft confers upon it.

Much of the crushing poverty of the industrial era was also created by the government, not by their support of the free market, but by their support of industrial corporations at the expense of everyone and everything else. They supported monopolies; they intervened in labor disputes, violently, on the side of the corporations; they passed laws destroying small businesses and farms; they eliminated common-law legal recourses when corporations injured or killed workers, polluted, and so on; they did everything they could to turn America into a country of millions of wage slaves working for a few rich industrialists.

And then in the 1930s when the stink got so bad they couldn't ignore it anymore, the U.S. Government came along and "fixed" a problem of their own creation by inserting themselves even more into private matters, but this time on the side of the common man. This is what libertarian Harry Browne meant when he said, "Government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, 'See, if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk.'"

3) Am I willing to accept a certain degree of inefficiency in that process, based on the sheer scale of such an undertaking?
        - I am, having an understanding of the nature of complex systems.

Does that acceptance of the "inefficiency" of this system include an acceptance of what I pointed out in #1?

Your parents consented to it for you when they either gave birth to you ...

A hereditary obligation? You just described feudalism.

If you wish to no longer be bound by that contract, I suggest you leave the country, forfeit the priveleges of the civilized society that has already given you countless advantages and protections without which you would likely be destitute or dead, and find some place else in the world to hang out with other 'rugged individualists'. Good luck with that.

Thanks! Many of us are doing almost exactly what you suggest!

PS I used to be a Randroid too, and once upon a time I would have agreed with you. Then I grew up, attained some sophistication, discovered empathy, and got a clue.

So thieving from people at gunpoint is what you call "empathy"? Well, I guess it's not you who do the actual thievery: You let the U.S. Government and their bureaucrats point the guns, steal other people's wealth, and then redistribute it down to you using an immense, multi-tiered bureaucracy of state, federal, and local agencies. That must be the "sophistication" part! :)

If you take something from someone without their permission, it's theft. This is a rather simple concept. Calling yourself "the State" doesn't change the simple meanings of simple words.

I do vote. I do a lot more than just vote, too. I have moved---to New Hampshire, not Somalia---because of my philosophical beliefs. Last week I was even part of a group that defeated $24M worth of new theft that our public school district was proposing.