Slashdot Mirror
Candidates on Net Issues
Robert Wilde writes "Slashdotters have shown great interest in knowing where the US Presidential candidates stand on the 'geek issues.' Now Microsoft's Slate has some answers."
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I honestly don't care where candidates say they stand on net issues.
It is not because I don't think that they could have an impact on us as a community. It is not because I don't care whether the net is regulated or not. That is important. But it is because I don't trust politicians. And I especially don't trust politicians that have opinions on issues they do not understand. Which is almost all politicians these days.
So I consider backing or voting for any candidate on this issue to be ultimately a waste of time. Politicians don't get it, don't care about it, and can't be trusted to keep their word anyway even if they do (a) understand the issues and (b) say they're taking a stand for the Right Thing. Politicians are too easily bought and think nothing of lying to us.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
They didn't ask what Harry Browne thinks, but I bet I can guess. How are most slashdot readers planing to vote? Almost every geek I know is a libertarian, though many don't realize it..
Libertarian.org
Harry Browne for President!
All candidates say
Stop porn, terrorists, crypto.
Ignorant morons.
Al Gore invented
the Internet. He is such
an 3133t h4x0r.
His "Open Source" web site
runs on NT/IIS
not Linux/Apache
GWB
begs Bill Gates for donations.
Protection money?
Are we citizens?
Or netizens? Elections
just encourage them.
---
120
chars is barely sufficient
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
So, which candidate would win in a Quake III tournament? *That's* the real question that would influence the vote of many /.'ers.
Internet taxes are not an issue for just the 'geeks'. It's an issue for all Americans, like any tax. What will taxes do for us? They'll give us more money for things like road improvements, educational purchases (computers anyone?), and law enforcement support. What will they do against us? They'll slow down this explosive economy that has really carried this country to the front of the world's pack. When Asia's economy fell apart, it was America's economy that survived relatively unscathed.
So what are geek issues? Computers in the schools for one. We talk a lot about kids need to be educated in the ways of the binary. Clinton made a pretty good announcement today, but let's go back a big further and get kids started with computers now so that maybe that won't need to take CS to really get to know the most important tool of the next millenium. Also, how about things real OSHA telecommuter guidelines that are fair to both businesses and employees? How about government seriously considering open-source software? How about patent reform so that people who come up with genuinely real ideas get some control over them and people who don't don't? How about some sort of final word on whether consumers will ever quit getting raped for advanced services like DSL?
I like privacy and Internet taxes and all, but those aren't geek issues, those are real American issues. Politicians are once again just paying lip service to a group of people who they think they need rather than taking a look at their real issues and addressing them. They did it with the 'soccer moms' in 1996 and they're doing it with us now.
I don't expect anything more out of this election than I've received out of any of the past: a bunch of lies and a lame-duck President.
Bill Bradley: Inclusionary - "In this time of unprecedented prosperity, we need to establish a consitutional right to ADSL."
George W. Bush: Proud - "I'm the only candidate here featured as the executive on a government website..."
John McCain: The Open Architecture candidate - wants to get rid of proprietary access to government (special interest lobbies).
Steve Forbes: Rich & Clueless - Doesn't quite understand the Internet, but is willing to pay somebody millions to tell him about it.
Orrin Hatch: The Content Provider - The Internet is a great place to disseminate porn, like the Starr report.
Gary Bauer: The Right-to-Lifer - Only interested in protecting unsaved emails.
Alan Keyes: Moralizing - Would ban the Internet. "What we need to do is get back to the ways of our forefathers, who blah blah blah..."
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I'm even more afraid of the totalitarian moral agendas of those 'Crats who worship the Greater Good and the diety called Godverment.
Those "christians" who want a totalitarian moral regime are not fooling themselves. I doubt most of them are even real Christians, and just mere church-goers. They do not follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, who said "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and "love thy neighbor as thyself".
I am a Christian. But I am also a libertarian in every sense of the word. I am a libertarian precisely because I am a Christian. Christ came to offer people a choice, not to make the choice for them.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
finkployd responds:
> Now there is a trade off. Do we allow e-commerce?
> Or do we allow state to educate kids and fight crime. Choose carefully, we can only pick one
>
> Where is is written that to be a vice president, you have to be a complete moron? Beteen Gore
> and Danny boy, we have had 12 years of some of the most off the wall comments come from that department.
The place it's written where, in order to be a vice president, you really do have to be a complete moron is in the minds of the voters.
It's a classical fallacy; that of "false dichotomy", and it's made much easier to do by a quirk of the English language. Most geeks instinctively know the difference between "A OR B" and "A XOR B", but the general public generally doesn't. Ask Joe Schmoe if he wants "pepperoni or olives" on his pizza, and he'll never say "both".
Politicians love this technique, because it makes demonizing one's opponent trivial. If you're not for Mr. Foo's Plan to save the chiiiildrun, you must be into taking pictures of nude six-year-old kids making bombs from instructions they got off the Internet.
With taxes; there are plenty of other ways to fund the local police and schools, but e-commerce threatens one of those ways. Therefore you can have e-commerce or police protection. By implication, you can't have both.
With crypto, you can have either free crypto or less terrorism. Never mind that the crypto cat is already out of the bag and that there are plenty of effective ways to fight terrorism. By putting them in a sentence with the word "or", the implication is that the two are mutually exclusive.
Anyone with two brain cells to rub together, geek or not, can see the flaws in those arguments.
As an added bonus, the use of the false dichotomy allows your handlers to get two opposing sound bites for the price of one. In Silicon Valley, "The VP supports finding a solution to these issues that allows the Internet and e-commerce to flourish". In the Mississippi Delta, "The Veep strongly opposes measures which would strip the states and counties of their ability to educate children and fight crime."
There's a reason why basic courses in logic, philosophy, and reasoning-and-rhetoric are no longer taught in high schools: none of the presently-ruling class of politicians would ever be elected if a substantial portion of the electorate were capable of even the most basic elements of reasoning: it's much easier to manipulate the actions of a flock of drooling sheeplike morons than it is to convince a bunch of sharp-minded logicians.
If it were ever extended to the broader population (this can never happen until the broader population acquires the rudiments of logical thinking), the 'net's style of open debate would scare the hell out of politicians, because bullshit would be exposed for what it is. Is anyone here buying LinuxOne?
Sadly, the converse is also true. The fact that the broader population will never acquire the critical thinking skills that we geeks take for granted means that "politicans and geek issues" will remain a red herring. You can't bluster geeks, you have to convince them. But as a politician, why spend millions trying to convince the geeks when there are 200-million sheep out there who will beg (with their votes) for your comforting logical fallacies like a masochist begs for the whip?