Slashdot Mirror
Dot-Communism Is Already Here
thanosk sends in a story at Wired Magazine about how online culture is, in many ways, trending toward communal behavior. Sharing and collaboration have become staples of active participation on the Internet, while not necessarily incorporating a particular ideology or involving a government.
"Most people in the West, including myself, were indoctrinated with the notion that extending the power of individuals necessarily diminishes the power of the state, and vice versa. In practice, though, most polities socialize some resources and individualize others. Most free-market economies have socialized education, and even extremely socialized societies allow some private property.
Rather than viewing technological socialism as one side of a zero-sum trade-off between free-market individualism and centralized authority, it can be seen as a cultural OS that elevates both the individual and the group at once. The largely unarticulated but intuitively understood goal of communitarian technology is this: to maximize both individual autonomy and the power of people working together. Thus, digital socialism can be viewed as a third way that renders irrelevant the old debates."
Fellow Comrades,
We have finally achieved Karl Marx's Dream.
I'm not quite sure where the author got that idea. The US has always been based on the idea that the individual is paramount. In our popular culture, we have always derived our strength from the individual and his willingness to help others.
A perfect example of this is our super-heros. Developed during a time of great uncertainty and world wars, our culture developed personas who were both empowered and selfless. Whether it be an accident of birth (Superman), a millionare who puts his own life and fortune on the line (Batman), or a scientist dealt a bum hand by fate (Hulk), they all are shown to make the most of their unique abilities in service to others.
Such thought processes have traditionally permeated our culture to the point where every child strives to be that hero. To save the world as it were. The results can be seen in everything from local government (simply amazing small towns built out of nothing) to the larger scale of US resolve during WWII and the later Space Race. Thus the communal aspects of working together have always been a strength for us.
The idea of a Big Brother culture is a relatively new one imported from more socialist countries. As if the population needs protection from itself. And for all intents and purposes, it's been causing more harm than good. The government has frustrated more airline passengers than they've prevented terrorists, all while trying to convince the populace to roll over when someone takes over a plane. (THAT is never going to happen again.) They've seized money from countless honest businesses and individuals in an attempt to stop drug trafficing. (Which has been more or less ineffective.) And they've generally created a situation where the populace is either looking for their next handout (excuse me, "bailout") or their trying to cheat their way out of paying their taxes.
Our system hasn't completely fallen yet, but I think the communal internet is a great wake up call for the system. It allows individuals to aspire, self-organize, and express their individuality in a helpful way. So in that respect, I agree with the article. I just don't think it's anything new or anything to do with Communism as a system. ;-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Adding an -ism to the end of a word completely changes the concept. Doing something communally and sharing is not the same as being forced to share by the government.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Ha. Yeah. Wow... that's quite some... yeah. Ahem.
It is really the desire to not have to re-invent the wheel every 3 or 4 years.
Socialism is state control. What we have on the web is anarchy. Fun, friendly anarchy.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The summary seems to ignore that socialism and communism are actually two different things.
Change the world. Let other people put labels. You'll be called a liberal, a communist, a nazi, a heathen, a bigot anyway...
Open Source (I think that is what it's about) is not communism, it is open source. Putting labels or trying to over-simplify things hinders correct thinking.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
"Most people in the West, including myself, were indoctrinated with the notion that extending the power of individuals necessarily diminishes the power of the state, and vice versa"
What? Western culture has been about empowering the individual, about heroes. Conversely, communist nations such as Russia and China are less about individuals, and more about "the good of many outweighs the good of the few".
Additionally, the "free" software you see isn't an affront to free market principles, in fact it is an application of "when a product has an infinitely increasing returns to scale, cost tends towards distribution costs", and since distribution costs are free, well, hello open source.
Open source is very much a product of western, capitalist countries that PROMOTE the power of the individual.
Open Your Mind. Open Your Source.
Did anyone else get a flash of Alan Sokal's genius upon reading the quote from the summary? So many words, so little content.
... is that the word no longer means communism. Now it means oppressive government, ala Soviet Union, China, North Vietnam. But these places show no sign of following the idealist philosophy people like Karl Marx set forth.
The concept of owning resources in common isn't anti-individualistic - having neighborhood parks or sharing roads and pipes and cables is just smart resource usage. Probably few people want absolutely everything to be publicly owned and managed, but most slashdotters probably like software and the internet that way.
Uneducated writer. Communism without government is Anarchism (simply put) and it's not new or about death and destruction. What he describes is Anarchism
How about torrents?
Torrents are after all based on share to get. If you upload you get to download.
Communism at it's best.
Say NO to unpaid Internships!
*snore* reads like a immature college essay... maybe sophomore year at best.
-ism does seem to color all this. Communism is an all or nothing system. Either you are part of that group or you aren't and there isn't any option to have a different group inside that group, unless you run things. The difference with online groups is the freedom to be part of any of them and leave at any time. Try leaving your current country and it's form of government if they don't throw you in jail they certainly won't welcome you back. One of the founding ideas for the USA is the idea of freedom of assembly. Online communities are just part of that freedom
It all starts at 0
There are certain inherent problems with the ideology commonly called socialism and communism and capitalism respectively.
But the basic problem of balancing out the individual within and against the context of the whole remains.
I only know of one organization that has really proposed a lot of well though out solutions and technology certainly can help get us there.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus_en.html [vatican.va]
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
The "power of working together" comes from shared individual resources and individual insights. There is no collective consciousness, no collective ideas. Voluntary collaboration is capitalistic and leads to progress. Communism/socialism, on the other hand, demands forced collaboration.
Once I had a friend from China who really liked to talk about politics. He told me about the Chinese government, and how they are mostly becoming capitalist, even though they keep the name of Communism.
Once he heard about open source, and so I explained it to him, finishing off with, "so in reality America is more communist than the Chinese." He got this shocked look that quickly turned into a bitter vengeful sort of look, and said nothing.
Qxe4
now it could attract only brain-dead pinkos.
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Quote from one of the biggest Communists: Thomas Jefferson
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
Wow, it feels like flashback in here!
I remember when Wired first came out, it was a "modern" magazine layout (i.e. scattered, glossy, and with articles indistinguishable from the ads interspersed throughout). I tried to read it a few times, and found that the articles were fluffy, hype-riddled garbage.
Strangely (or not), it survived--stranger still, some of the writers got quite good and occasionally insightful. Still a pain to read in print, but their website makes it bearable.
This article, is just like the good ol' days--hype-riddled garbage. Amongst huge numbers of other fallacies, he conveniently forgets the fact that the social(ist) media are first and foremost, capitalist advertising platforms.
Thank you Wired, for reminding us of your roots.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Sounds downright libertarian.
Voluntary relations to form voluntary communities organized from the ground-up with the property rights to make things stick.
Words are just words, but I find this the polar opposite of what we've gotten from socialism in the past. I do expect that Wired would call it "socialism."
.comrade
This is utter crap. Which socialist or communist country has been been successful without letting go of some power in order to empower the individual? Even then they still are very oppressive denying rights that we all take for granted in the US.
It's not socialism when Slashdot users do it. It's libertarians pursuing a common goal without losing site of the individual within the constraints of an organization that while providing rules and standards is not a government.
Communal behavior is encouraged in many forms in all social systems, regardless of the government-enforced economic system. It's called "being a good citizen", "being patriotic", "being polite", "being good", etc.
There is nothing anti-capitalist about good social behavior or working together without explicit payment. Many people could be strongly libertarian, yet give to charity, participate in community organizations, etc. -- and there's nothing inconsistent about that at all.
Are people really so one-dimensional that they can't see that "good idea" does not equal "good law"? Laws are only a last resort incentive to solve a problem, because they give government the power to take your possessions, freedom, and even your life.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
1. "...To each according to his needs." ignores luxury items, which no one needs, but people want. The existence of them makes people happy, and encourages work.
2. It discourages individuals from working hard, as you gain nothing by doing so. Only those with a huge altruistic streak, or similar need for approval have incentive to work.
3. "From each according to his capability". One of the major problems people have always had is to determine who is actually capable, as opposed to simply satisfactory. Capitalism, by offering HUGE incentives, tends to accurately discover who has capacity beyond minimal, while communism does not, resuolting in mediocre people being thought capable, thereby giving them authority.
When you look at the web as opposed to meat-world, certain realities appear.
First, everything on the web is at heart a luxury item. So what is going on is not "to each according to his needs", but instead "To each according to his desires."
Second, The work at heart is realtively easier and ENJOYABLE to some. Anyone that has spent an hour digging a hole and an hour writing code will tell you that. So you don't need to actually encourage people to work hard.
Third, capability on the web is easier to detect. More of it is one-person projects, and those are often signed. Software can be measured for speed, GUI can be easily be examined for ease of use.
Fourthly, most of what is offered on the web is relatively low value, not high value. Honestly, we use socialism a lot in the Meat world - for low value things. People don't pay money for a better subway seat. We use socialism to assign movie theater seats - people in wheel chairs get the wheel chair seats for free, they are not forced to pay more for them - even if they are in prime spots.
The web is not the meat-world. What works in one place will not work in the other.
That said, I find that capitalism still tends to triump over socialism even in the web for most areas where money, the requirement for capitalism, exists. No socialist effort is going to make a web site that beats Google, Apple's itune Store, or Amazon.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I wonder how North Korean Slashdot readers would respond to that.
Oh, wait..
There's nothing wrong with VOLUNTARY communal organization. So long as individuals can freely part ways, it's not abusive. Trying to lock people into it rapidly makes it evil.
Communism doesn't fail, people who had power failed communism...
Every political ideology is right.... the people who have power, uses that power until they overuse it to their own profit so much that the majority of the people use their personal power ot overthrow them...
The only good thing that democracy has right now is: it's not crooked enough to have the population revolt against it.
I'm sure there will be one day that the people will wake up and know that their system is so corrupt, that the elected officials are only idiots who are popular and that the majority of the electorate refuse to vote because they know that no choice they can make will the right one, when every choice is a bad one...
One of my buddies wrote his thesis on how 4chan and other anonymous image boards have created a new variant of Communism. This has inspired me to go dig it up for another read.
from the no-in-soviet-russia-jokes-i-swear-to-god dept.
In soviet Russia, god swears to you?
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Me use many big words from dickshonary and me sound smarter.
Wrote this article a long time ago : Link
"Thus, digital socialism can be viewed as a third way that renders irrelevant the old debates."
No it doesn't. Why? Because on the one hand you're talking forms of government and on the other you're talking digital collaboration. Try comparing apples to apples and your analogy rings truer. What may work for pooling resources within a piece of technology may not fair well in societies at large. The main reason being that there are very real political differences not only between groups of individuals but individuals themselves. At the risk of being as guilty as the author, you see the same things within collaborative technologies as forking is prominent. Furthermore, even within companies there is such collaboration so "collaboration" need not equal "communism."
Just add "on the Internet" to the key sentences and it all makes more sense.
... on the Internet
... on the Internet.
... on the Internet.
I wonder if these shocking cultural changes aren't as big of a deal as the Wired article makes it out to be, in that they're scoped only to the online world. The offline world may barely change in response. Then again, if everybody is more and more conducting most of their activities on the Internet, that's a different story.
Philosophistry
Adding an -ism to the end of a word completely changes the concept. Doing something communally and sharing is not the same as being forced to share by the government.
This is a common misconception. A Communist society does not have a government.
Being forced to share by a government is Socialism, not Communism. Communism is a society where everybody pitches in together so that nobody is in need and private ownership not only does not exist, but is not needed. It's a nice idea, and actually works very well in small groups where all members can police each other, but breaks down on any type of larger scale.
Unfortunately many people still think that the USSR was a Communist country, even though the name itself says "Socialist" not "Communist", and it's to the point where the term is horribly misused. Kind of along the same lines as most people thinking the USA is a Democracy when in fact it is a Republic (or a "representational Democracy" if you prefer more politically 'correct' terminology).
In the digital realm it isn't a zero-sum game. If I help you write some code or share information with you then I don't lose it. In the physical world, if I share a cow or chicken with you then I have less food. It's easier to share when you don't lose that which you share.
Good thing the internet is communal and not communist, I couldn't imagine what the world would be like if the Government FORCED me to comment on slashdot articles. ...
Wait...
Hardly. Do the people own the cables? The cell towers? The servers and routers? They even have control over their own hardware?
We're at the mercy of international conglomerates with government-granted monopolies and utility right-of-way, who censor our speech and interfere with our commerce, and what they can't do themselves they buy politicians to legislate for them.
But when any small municipality attempts to free themselves from the corporate stranglehold by erecting their own network infrastructure, they are sued into submission for "unfair competition".
That is the kind of communism we should strive for. It should be about the communal ownership of real things, things with measurable value, the very infrastructure on which we will base the future of the increasingly augmented human race, not a bunch of hippie-dippy nonsense about sharing and social media.
I think the author is making a large mistake based on not understanding the difference between free people freely acting and government enforcing of behavior. The government forcing me to 'share' my money with others via taxation and redistribution is very different than my voluntary donation to another person. Likewise, free people may decide that it in their best interests to cooperate on certain development (technological or otherwise) and share the results. That cooperation and sharing doesn't become socialism or communism until the government says that people MUST cooperate and share. The difference between cooperation and socialism then is law. Being coerced is much different than voluntary participation.
Communism/socialism, on the other hand, demands forced collaboration.
Yes, and I think it's a real shame I'm not in financial ruin from my five years of tuition (no fees) and my summer vacation spent in the hospital plus ongoing check-ups (no fees).
What especially worries me is that the doctors who treated me---even though they're great doctors, really smart people, if their parents weren't rich enough to put them (and their siblings) through college, is it really right for me to accept their treatment?
And should I ever leave the safety of the university and get a Real Job, I can look forward to paying it all back on the taxes, so that I can only afford a big (not huge) house with a big (not huge) lawn and a fast (not flying) car.
Really. We don't have flying cars in Denmark. But we do have free education, free health care, free public libraries, free telephony (50 texts and 50 minutes per month, cheaper than US rates if you go beyond), only a few of the ISPs are evil (not mine), and we're a socialist country:
Our constitution, our frigging constitution, says the state will support you if you can't do it yourself (in exchange for you fulfilling the responsibilities that go along with it, i.e. a state-appointed job).
I'm not quite sure where the author got that idea. The US has always been based on the idea that the individual is paramount.
I think you answered your own question. He got that idea from the US and, as is unfortunately rather stereotypical, forgot that there are more countries than the US in "the west". In most of those countries there is far more of a balance between the individual and the state. In fact even in the US this seems to be rapidly becoming the case because power is held increasingly by corporations and while US laws seem to regard these as individuals of some description they are in fact communal groups with rigid heirarchies.
from the no-in-soviet-russia-jokes-i-swear-to-god dept.
In Soviet Russia, God swears at You!
> ...It allows individuals to aspire, self-organize, and express their individuality in a helpful way. So in that respect, I agree with the article. I just don't think it's anything new or anything to do with Communism as a system...
So why do we move back to a stupid argument between the absolutes of Capitalism vs Communism when the correct solution is somewhere to be found in the middle?
The key is that the Internet is Infrastructure. The tools we develop on it to organize ourselves are just Infrastructure. Open Source software, OSes and libraries are Infrastructure. It makes sense that individuals will sometimes collaborate in their own self interest to build common infrastructure, because ultimately it results in more benefit to individuals in the form of increased economic activity. If you're going to call the Internet Communist, you might as well also tar roads, bridges, water systems, sewage...
Many think it should all be privatized, but this is a fringe view and the view of the majority is that some infrastructure is best implemented as some kind of collective endeavor, and that this is fine and normal. Communism is just a scare-word to make you think that this is somehow not good and normal.
Voluntary cooperation, recognizing the bedrock principle of private property, and the right to give it away for free if one likes, isn't communism or socialism. That's anarcho-individualism, and could easily be anarcho-capitalism.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
The way society is set up punishes, with violent results, people who fail to function within its particular rules.
To deny health care, food (work?) is passively violent.
Rubbish. People aren't accounting respect - because it is impossible to quantify.
What this describes is "mutual aid" - the idea that helping others helps you in the long run. It isn't a capitalist idea for sure, it isn't a Marxist idea either. It might be described as a communist idea but its more correctly placed as an anarchist idea.
Forget whatever you have heard from a 13 year old dressed in black; the core of anarchism is organization and cooperation without coercion or leadership. The idea of 'organized anarchy' might sound oxymoronic to most people, but that is only because your mental definition of anarchism is far from what (adult) anarchists believe.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The Open Source community exemplifies this.
Despite its many flaws, capitalism is the quickest breeding ground for altruistic communal endeavours. When computer communication became efficient, an Open Source community was inevitable.
"Who tells whom what to do?" - V. I. Lenin
More correct to say, it has historically broken down at different scales in different times and places, and has never successfully been implemented on a national scale.
Technology has changed the size and structure of informal, voluntary communities and made them stronger and more productive. Based on that observation alone, I don't think you can definitively say there are ideas for society that are universally bad or universally good - ideas depend on their implementation and their suitability for the (changing) situation.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I hesitate to break it to you, but *the* distinguishing characteristic of Marxism is the advocacy of the *violent* overthrow of the bourgoisie. Marx would be a footnote in history if he did not advocate that course of action and have half the world take him up on it.
Yes this article is a misapplication of terms. Communism is organized through coercive authority.
The web most closely resembles market anarchy.
Fun, friendly, peaceful, productive, market anarchy. or anarcho-capitalism, whatever your preference. (Which, btw, is a cooperative system. Yes firms and individuals, compete, but they succeed only inasmuch as they convince others to voluntarily buy or use their innovation)
And, I'd venture to say, part of the reason for this is that the predominant platform of internet servers is Linux, an operating system that rejects Intellectual Monopoly 'Rights'.
Check out http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm an expose on how the rejection of IP can produce the innovation like that seen in the internet.
P.S. the Star Cops quote below reminds me of a similar quote by F.A. Hayek noting that the order seen in market systems is produced 'by human action, but not human design'.
When I read the Manifesto, my takeaway was that Marx was really railing against Corporatism instead of Capitalism. My opinion of him was that he wasn't mad at Capitalism per say, he was mad at the social structures people created when they participated in corporate activities that demeaned and abused the workers. Why didn't he just say Corporatism instead of Capitalism? My guess is that he didn't know how else to describe the enemy he was writing about. Michael Crichton writes in The Great Train Robbery that the Victorians were the first 'modern' civilization and they were the first to grapple with all the current social issues we have right now with urbanization, capitalism, etc. The very concept of 'Corporatism' probably hadn't been invented yet and Marx had to work with the concepts at hand. When people work for a corporation, they tend to be subsumed within an amoral entity that reflects the sum total of its individual components. Thus being in the corporate environment tends to decrease our empathy for our fellow humans and in Marx's time, would lead to the abuses he saw.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Who is being compelled against their will to contribute? While each individual may contribute to their ability, it is on a voluntary basis. "Each according to their need" is ONLY being met as market demands and individuals consider it in their best interest to meet that demand. Just because the exchange can not be measured in per unit monetary compensation does not make the contribution "selfless". People contribute for recognition, or hell, maybe because they actually gain value from their own work and can not loose any value by sharing it. Also, major contributions give you an advantage of time to market. Red Hat, for example, greatly gains from its contributions because while the information is free to share (even if they are not assisting directly to the free exchange) they have built the reputation of quality products and can be the first to teach people how to use it.
I think what people are finally realizing is that censorship isn't greedy, but irrational. Copyright was intended to be very limited, but people like Jack Valenti made a living as a con artist convincing people otherwise. Copyright is government attempting to put a control on something that doesn't need to be controlled, and as people are escaping the abuse of government regulation by way of free and voluntary exchange of information as was MEANT to be protected in the US Constitution, of course we are seeing tremendous growth.
Karl Marx would have called for government to come in and heavily regulate software. Designate a central authority to manage the development of software, public schools train a specific number of necessary software developers, outlaw the possession, development, or use of "rogue" compilers to help protect people from poor quality software that wasn't approved by the state, and possibly imprison people for unauthorized forking of projects arguing that such action "steals" the necessary resources of the state and impedes progress.
Centralized, communistic control over what people develop and how is the way of Microsoft, if not even more so by Apple. Government does give them big contracts too, and many government (public) schools mandate their use.
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both said that with no natural right to real property ownership, there is no imaginable justification for natural rights over an idea (Jefferson Letters). Does that make THEM Communists?
Further, just because everyone wins does not make it collectivism. Collectivism asks for self sacrifice, that you as an individual is not as important as the many. Really? That is why people develop software? Hackers don't have really huge egos when it comes to their accomplishments? Gee, guess I had it all wrong.
I think the Internet is Communistic about as much as I think Al Gore invented it. If I haven't made my point yet, I don't know what else I can say that will.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
The author has kind of missed the point. Communism is an economic system. It is not about communal behaviour at all. Communism is an alternative to Capitalism or Socialism. It is not an alternative to democracy.
Most of the systems the author speaks about are new social systems that operate within a Capitalist framework. They could not exist in a communist framework, unless sanctioned by the politburo, because in a communist everything is owned by the state.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
No socialist effort is going to make a web site that beats Google, Apple's itune Store, or Amazon.
No, but a pair of university students could easily come up with an algorithm, let's call it PageSort, which is better than all the current offerings.
Then, their university (let's call in Stanfort) could host the first implementation until it becomes so big and popular that it needs dedicated hosting.
Who knows, maybe it could become something big that will overthrow Yahoo...
It wasn't the Google boys' student loans that gave them the idea for PageRank. Socialism (i.e. tax-paid tuition) could just as easily have given you Google, in its early stages.
The reason Google wouldn't be able to progress is that no one will provide Google with the data center it needs through a socialist effort---and I have a nagging suspicion that you'll say "no, they earn the money the use for their operational costs, they're not socialist."
In the age of the web 2.0 we still do not have a meta-government made by the people to the people. With principles like radical transparency, like the ones we learned from editing wikipedia.
I believe it is a question of having someone to blame... like some server farm that chooses microsoft over some opensource distro. They like to pass the blame to other guys. As long as that happens we, or at least until a greater percentage of the population becomes wiser to choose their own policies, we will be stuck in Soft Despotism. But hey, google also took some decades to happen, so it doesn't mean it cannot be done.
"Most people in the West, including myself, were indoctrinated with the notion that extending the power of individuals necessarily diminishes the power of the state, and vice versa"
What? Western culture has been about empowering the individual, about heroes. Conversely, communist nations such as Russia and China are less about individuals, and more about "the good of many outweighs the good of the few".
The internet works because in many cases empowered individuals will choose the good of the many because it aligns so nicely with the good of the few/themselves. Some of these cases happen naturally, and some are the result of government setting a proper framework for interaction (so, extending the power of individuals by extending the power of government).
There is no "conversely" here.
"I'm not quite sure where the author got that idea. The US has always been based on the idea that the individual is paramount. In our popular culture, we have always derived our strength from the individual and his willingness to help others."
Those ideas are being smothered and weeded out of society today. Seat belt laws came about because big brother (primarily insurance companies) knows better than the individual. The "proper" use of Personal Protection Equipment isn't an individual choice (either for the individual worker, or the individual company) instead being mandated by both law and insurance policies. Individual choice is being assaulted when it comes to health/life insurance in general - laws are being authored that REQUIRE an individual to have insurance, along with minimum requirements for that insurance. An individual cannot decide to save a few dollars on an automobile purchase by dropping the 6 airbags, shock absorbers in the bumpers, shatterproof glass, and all the other innovations designed to save lives.
Individual choice in education is limited in this day and age - the government mandates the curriculum to a large extent, and local schoolboards have little choice in the matter.
I AM an individualist, and I am keenly aware of the restrictions placed on me by society. Any time I do the "unexpected", thus standing out from the crowd, there is a policeman nearby to question me.
No, the US is definitely moving toward collectivism, there is no denying that. The law of the land is "Conform, or be rehabilitated."
No longer do people take pride in local culture - instead, one homogenous people from sea to shining sea watches the same drivel that Hollywood calls "entertainment", eats the same pablum pushed by McDonald's and other corporate food chains, and puts themselves in debt trying to keep up with role models held out by Corporate America.
Need an example of the loss of individualism? Go down to any street corner in the cities. Watch the white boys who are trying to look/sound black. Watch the black and the latin ladies who are trying to look/sound white.
Individuals are looking at extinction in the not-so-distant future. It ain't cool to be black, or white, or Mexican. It ain't cool to be Southern, Northern, or Mid-Western. It certainly ain't cool to be proud of your German ancestry, your Polish ancestry, or whichever land our grandparents came from. It is very UNCOOL to proclaim your religious background with your dress, actions, or words - you will be accused of some kind of intolerance.
"It takes a village to raise an idiot" is the wisdom today....... and they aren't far from wrong.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Holy crap, another Star Cops fan!
(the only other one I've met is a former colleague who got me into the series)
While wikipedia seems to generally disagree with Nathan's statement, I happen to agree with it - an ordered society (with laws and taxes and social services and whatnot) with no single "head" of state is theoretically possible. Unfortunately I can't think of any real-world examples. :-|
Maybe Box knows...
from the no-in-soviet-russia-jokes-i-swear-to-god dept.
In Soviet Russia God Swear to you!!
That's fine for your country, but keep it there and please don't try to coerce any other country to do the same.
If the U.S. put that in it's constitution, I would be gone in a moments notice. People need to be able to fail as well as succeed. Safety-nets hinder progress.
I allways had the impression that american people were brainwashed to hate that word (together with "socialism"). Specially during the cold war. But it might be just an ignorant impression. ps: i'm brazilian
It boggles my mind that most of these comments ignore the very explicit political and philosophical goals of the FSF and GNU. So many are quick to "push politics aside" while reaping the benefits of battles won through hard, serious activism. How about actually reading RMS's writing (RTFRMS?), for a start?
/. summary doesn't provide any context that could make this a good forum for discussing the very important cultural shift we're all experiencing. This link in particular seems appropriate, since the term "Dot-Communism" is thrown around.
The Wired article is pretty bad, which I expect, but the
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
When a centralized world body controls the internet with an iron fist - its content, its distribution and you are forced to contribute without payment then you might be able to call it communal, but until then it is the furthest thing from communal. Ideas have consequences. Don't think that your government doesn't see what happens on the net and eyes shutting it down. The most dangerous idea man has ever had is that he is free and beholden to none.
the internet browses you
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Communism is 'forcibly taking with threat of death' from savers and investors and giving to gamblers and risk taking losers and the poor.
Capitalism calls it charity.
"government provided" or "society provided" are way better words than "free" in there.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Big words make hurt in brain area.
Whether you work for a small startup or a megacorp there's always an emphasis on the importance of teamwork, cooperation and selflessness -- but only within the organization. Those attitudes seem to be great as long as they serve one business, but somehow they become evil when they aren't helping one business compete against another. The business world's combination of cooperation and competition has produced great things, but it doesn't always. For example, competition is paramount even in the face of a superior product. Better products often disappear because of bad marketing, lack of advertising money, or because of short-term price pressure introduced artificially by competitors with deeper pockets who want to keep their own inferior products on the market. The competitive spirit of capitalism can certainly show a lot of gumption and drive, but there's a peeing-in-the-pool aspect to it that just doesn't appeal to me. I think the reason it usually wins over cooperation is that it dangles the carrot of fabulous wealth in front of people's faces, like a Golden Ticket, and more people are drawn to that particular carrot than the wouldn't-this-be-cool carrot.
It humors me greatly to see the amount of energy and the number of words people in the States need to spend in order to mention anything that has to do with "communism" while not bashing it at the same time.
The article goes into a lot of detail about how socialism is not the best term, but one of the better terms to use. The first half is devoted to syntax. Basically it goes through the levels of sharing, cooperation, collaboration, and collectivism and how really, it is a blend of socialism capitalism. I think relating it to how applying the free market to problems in the 90s resulted in huge progress, and now, we can do the same, with tons of people volunteering their time. For instance, 60,000 man-years went into Fedora 9, which would be unheard of in a big company. Anyways, ignore the language and focus on the themes. (and I apologize for not reading through all the responses).
Middle ground? There is no middle ground. What DOES exist is different questions, but not middle ground. If one tends towards a better society, than a mix of both is certain to be a failure.
The problem I see is that people (of certain political tendencies) give government certain god-like qualities, most common believing government has perfect knowledge, or that anything the government does is "free". Government is simply a business that "we" have authorized a virtually unlimited use of force. Beyond that they have no special super powers. Government can help organize a military to protect against foreign invaders, police that can neutrally handle disputes over violations of social contract, courts to handle issues of contract law and establish statutes regarding the interpretation of contract language to help encourage mutually beneficial voluntary exchange of goods and service.
To say "we need the government to blah blah blah..." is to say that violence is a necessary means to an end. To paraphrase Jonathan Gullible, the penalty for all crimes against government is death / loss of life. This is the difference between taxes and charitable donation or voluntary exchange; people will be most compelled to be charitable with a gun to their head, how could we ever expect to get so much from people on a voluntary basis? If it is a one time thing, I would be inclined to agree, but can you really argue maximum net production through such means? This implies that a robber could keep robbing the same home repeatedly and that their gain will be proportional to the number of times they rob the house. Does knowing which houses are the richest change much?
To paraphrase Richard Saldman
Let me suggest an experiment. ... For one year don't buy or use any Microsoft products. ... At the same time send the government no money, that is, pay no taxes. Then wait. Watch who comes after you for your money and how and with what weapons.
The "problem" with the government trying to regulate the Internet is where do you point the gun, the governments only tool? The government does not do work, it only consumes, with the intent and strength to intimidate by threat do do what it desires... but it is ok because it is the will of (51% of) the people, right?
And just because it was brought it up, got to mention something. I am really getting tired of this "finding a middle ground" / "moderate" position. Moderation is a tool of negotiation, not a principle unto itself. Take for example an accused killer. The courts have the authorization to take this persons life if convicted of the crime, so there is a burden of the court to justify both its use of force, and their authority to do so. In this particular case, it is found that the police in their enthusiasm fabricated evidence in order to make the case go faster. Unfortunately for the police as a matter of checks and balances, their fabrication of evidence and getting caught in doing so means that the accused man must be let go, because an objective measure of evidence, according to the law, is now impossible. One one side, (a type of classical conservative) people claim that unfortunately the man must be let go, and shame of the police for tainting their revered leg
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
This is why free-market, de-centralized government RULEZ! The internet is mostly a free-market, unregulated by government, society. Within that society, any other type of society can exist, as long as membership is not mandatory but voluntary.
There is no such thing as true anarchy, not for any foreseeable period of time.
What society often fails to realize is that government is a necessary evil, because a true utopia is impossible.
All it takes is one power-hungry tyrant to swoop down upon the sheepish masses and seize control by force and you have a dictatorship, if only because people would rather be slaves than corpses.
And since people are inherently selfish, they will be happy to do anything they can get away with, and many of them will not even care if they cause harm, or even if the harm they cause outweighs the benefit they reap. In fact, the whole science of economics hinges on this human tendency to self-interest.
Furthermore, anyone who is in power, be it by force, election, bribe, or otherwise, has a vested interest in advancing himself.
So power is inevitable. Any situation that lacks it will quickly be exploited by the strong and the anarchy shall cease to be. Far better to have the throne occupied by a good king than to leave it open to a strong-arming mercenary.
That includes by corporations who barge in politically on the government when the government doesn't take strong stands.
The "group" is, most definitely, NOT the State.
The State functions on a basis of coercion and force. Groups of individuals cooperate and commune through the Internet by voluntary association.
Insidious sleight of hand there: the internet brings people together, so we should basically discard the old "freedom" vs "socialism" debate.
Yuck.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Very well said, thank you. While I think that the only just purpose of government is infrastructure, the only point I would clarify is that the only thing that makes government special is that they are the one company whose actions can not ever be accused of being criminal, from taking in the form of taxes, to the use of force to compel people to do things. Smith and many other Free Market supporters speak of the invisible hand of the economy. Government is often an invisible gun. In any argument that begins with "The government needs to..." should simply be replaced with "The use of violence is necessary because...". I think this would make many debates go much more smoothly, and also much more honest about what we expect the "government" to do.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
Ah, the great "for our own good" argument. I don't think we have a Big Brother government so much as Molesting Senile Uncle Sam that assures us that all this experience will better prepare you to please all the hot babes when you get to college.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
Continuing on from the ellipsis: delivering electricity and natural gas, telephone and cable television services are also natural monopolies. Economics 101 instructs that a free market in any of these services will quickly devolve into a monopoly, and that unregulated monopolies unduly enrich the monopoly owners and impoverish the public.
People need to be able to fail as well as succeed. Safety-nets hinder progress.
Agreed, but why should failure result in ruining that person? I make a buisiness, pour all my money in to it. It's a great buisiness model. Nothing can go wrong. Except for one thing that I couldn't possibly have foreseen: I get in a car accident that breaks both my legs and fractures my skull, putting me in the hospital for months. Since I'm not able to do anything with my buisiness, it flounders and fails, either because someone moves in on my territory, or I simply didn't have other employees, or any of a myriad of reasons. On top of losing all my money in my buisness, through no fault of my own, I'm racking up astronomical medical bills. If I'm a couple hundred thousand in debt, with no resources anymore, do you realistically think that's something a person can ever reasonably recover from? I had a good idea once, but due to crushing debt, if I have another, it'll never happen. Thus a lack of a safety net hinders progress. I think you need to start considering the full implications of something before you speak.
But then you posted AC, so I'm sure you did.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Consentual sharing is not communism and is perfectly acceptable in a free market. Communism is "share or we will kill you".
More correct to say, it has historically broken down at different scales in different times and places, and has never successfully been implemented on a national scale.
Honestly, what HAS worked on a national level. Government doesn't scale well.
With English subtitles: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0861739/
It's a good movie.
ARGH! Sometimes pure moronism strikes the Slashdot editors. Socialism is *perfectly fine* when it's voluntary. So is communism. So is cannibalism. So is Bondage and Discipline, Sadism and Masochism. The key here is the voluntary nature of the Internet. You can't coerce somebody over a fiber optic connection. As the classic liberals put it: "Anything that's peaceful" should be tolerated.
It bugs the piss out of me that so many people Just Don't Get It: individualism is not about doing things individually. It's about the individual CHOOSING what collective things they want to do. Collectivism, on the other hand, or its college roommate, statism, is all about having an elite choose what things individuals will be forced to do.
So yeah, the ancient conflict between those who want to force others to back their latest scheme, and those who want to live in a peaceful society, remains.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Point taken. Capitalism also fits into that category too then; See the difference between a family-owned shop and Enron, Microsoft or A&G
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
This is incredibly stupid.
If you use no Microsoft products, you owe Microsoft nothing. If you use Microsoft products without paying for them, then you are stealing, and Microsoft can come after you. The only reason they don't is because they lack the resources, or wish to avoid a PR nightmare. If you listen to music you have not paid for, there's a chance you will be sued by the RIAA.
If you are paying no taxes, and still making an income, you *are* using public resources (directly or indirectly,) and you aren't paying for them. If you make no money and use no public services, you legally owe no taxes. No one will show up at your door.
Really. Think this one through.
Profoundly weak understanding of socialism, so a failed analogy right there.
That is the only lesson from 9/11 and was always common sense. I'm surprised one of the occasional people who goes nuts mid-flight didn't manage to crash a plane decades earlier. As is was, before anyone knew anything was wrong, the pilots were dead, and the planes were doomed, because at the very least the terrorists knew that they needed to secure the cockpit long enough to crash.
You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.
I suspect you meant "subsidized by taxation." Which is completely different.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not disparaging the system you've got. If it works for your country then that's great. But it's disingenuous to pretend that forcing other people to support you through taxation (which is inherently coercive) constitutes some kind of magical loophole in the laws of reality that allows you to obtain the mythical "free lunch." It doesn't.
I agree - but the key questiion is *where* infrastructure ends. Our idea of infrastructure is culturally and historically determined.
In some historical societies (even some well working ones, by most standards), food production was collectivized. In such societies, crop fields were by all means part of the infrastructure.
Conversely, in other societies, education (or water supply, for that matter) was privately owned.
Are hospitals part of the infrastructure or not? The Health Care debate of the last couple of decades in the US, ultimately revolves around this question. The Europeans has settled long ago that argument, by considering Hospitals as part of the infrastructure.
According to a widely quoted definition, infrastructure is made of ""the basic services or social capital of a country, or part of it, which make economic and social activities possible".
If we go by that, basically it is a tautology to say that infrastructure is just about everything that must be collectively owned. Again the key question is: what is part of infrastructure, and what is not.
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
He missed out on the best incredibleness.
Eben Moglen wrote a much more interesting take on this six years ago called "The dotCommunist Manifesto" http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/dcm.html that is still worth reading. Though maybe read ""Die Gedanken Sind Frei": Free Software and the Struggle for Free Thought" http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/berlin-keynote.html instead.
I'd like to see where this person speaks English and talks like a regular person.
All there is to this is loads of big words and double talk. Frankly this is like reading the legal text that comes with a credit/debit card.
We all know what communism is
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/communism
Somehow being -free- on the internet and the "government men" (a.k.a. men in black) doing the same is communism. It would be if you put up a site like this and you could not post material / discussions like this without "disappearing".
Else they should try living in Russia for a few years, I think the difference will be a little more clear on what -exactly- communism is.
This person is having paranoid delusions.
The secret to any successful government is in its system of checks and balances to prevent leaders from abusing their power.
Socialist regimes didn't fail because of poor ideology, but because its leaders abused their power to the detriment of society.
One of the things we like about open source is that if a leader or organization stops serving its community, anyone can step in to fork the project.
So if you're building an online community, don't worry too much about whether its leaders should be elected or not or how many there should be, but more on how your system deals with leaders who abuse their privileges or are incompetent. If you can't work out a system, just make sure all your code and data is open source :-)
Sound money is a "fringe view", too. It's too bad more people don't get it.
The problem is that state run or state mandated monopolies easily become a slippery slope to more power grabs by the state.
Let's take your "obvious" case of roads. You know how the federal government forces states to go along with completely unconstitutional things like drug laws? The put into the bill that if you don't do things their way, you don't get highway funds.
It is not obvious that a state monopoly on roads is a good thing. Widely believed, maybe, but not obvious. Again, look at the economy, and all the widely believed assumptions ("real estate will always go up!") that brought it down. The idea that we were in a housing bubble was considered a fringe view, too.
Liberty uber alles.
OP is an idiot.
Move along.
That's the pie-in-the-sky version of corporations. The way you've described communism is exactly the way corpoartism works - which is to say neither of them is consensus-based. Who decides what gets said? Management and the PR team. Who decides what gets made? Management and marketability teams. Who decides what processes to use to achieve goals? Management, safety, and financial controllers. Who decides customer protcol, dress code, internal procedures? Management. The workers are your citizens, the deciders are your government.
Almost all social organizations, no matter which side of the fence you are on, will trend toward this pyramidic form of power structure. Yeah, there's exceptions, but to date, they remain just that, exceptions.
To believe that a corporation is somehow the sum of wills of its employees is naïve, realizing that individual skills come together to benefit the pyramid structure is closer to the truth, but realizing that making decisions that influence the lives of many 'under' someone describes both communism and corporations is even closer. Yes, there are vast other differences, they simply don't include the set you attempted to put forth.
Welcome to the Internet! We hope you enjoy your time spent here!
In regards to your initial query, we feel the following links would make excellent starting points:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_necromancy
My point exactly.
Communism would entail everyone cooperating on one project. The internet is in fact anarchy, with people forming what equates to communes (see anarcho-syndicalism). Same thing with open source.
The Internet is not a model of Communism, it is a model of Anarchy - but it is one which works.
thats what has given us the scientific and industrial revolution of 18th and 19th centuries. EVERYTHING we used to build up our modern life today, was discovered in those days as principle. Faraday didnt ask royalties for anyone who developed on his pioneering physics work, lavoisieur didnt try to strangle people using his discoveries, and NOONE came out and spoke sh@t like 'science needs guardlines' like that moron of a sony ceo did.
so we were able to build up today's civilization.
now the sh@tface holistic economists in usa have managed to turn science and technology into a swamp of patents and copyrights today, and noone is able to make a move forward into the future - but hey - its good for 'business' right ?
there are some countries which need to revise their entire culture and political and business philosophy.
Read radical news here
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. --Thomas Jefferson
This is consistent with what you have said as well, but however minimal he wanted the government, he obviously wanted corporations to be far less powerful.
A free market means no corporations, or some that are assembled temporarily for large contracted projects. Liberty from the monied aristocracy is far more important than liberty from government, since you are free to change government through a vote - which a person only has one of. Trying to dislodge a monied aristocracy when dollars are votes is nearly impossible.
I think it's a mistake to characterise it as "free-market". It misses the point and obscures the thing which is actually the most interesting about "dot-communism".
A market is a place where you go to exchange goods and services for other things of equal value (="commodity exchange"). What makes it "free" is that you are free to exchange or not. No-one forces you to buy or sell.
But a market is only one possible exchange mechanism. For instance, my girlfriend brought me coffee in bed this morning. On the weekend I'll make breakfast while she sleeps in. This is an exchange of valued goods and services, but it is not a market. I did not pay for that coffee. When you cook dinner for your family, you don't typically expect them to pay you for it. Sometimes kids do get paid for doing chores around the house, and to that extent they are working in a market (though not a free market!). But usually domestic production is carried on outside of market mechanisms, using a form of "gift exchange". Note that gift exchange predates the market, historically. Our distant ancestors did not have money, but they have always had exchange.
Similarly, market transactions are unlike the transactions that take place in a "dot-communist" system. e.g. if I download a piece of free software, and I contribute a patch to that same software, I have clearly made an exchange, but this is not a market transaction. I don't buy the software and sell my patch. I don't swap the software for my patch. I freely (as in gratuitously) obtain the software and am under no obligation to submit my patch, which I submit entirely voluntarily. I could just as easily (more easily) not submit a patch at all. It is this non-market nature which is the unusual thing about "dot-communism".
What's new here (and politically significant), is that non-market exchange is hitting the big-time, outside of the domestic sphere, as part of large-scale, socialised, economic production (e.g. Linux).
a group of AC's telling each other they suck.
On the web you arrive at Communism. In Soviet Russia Communism arrives at you.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
"I personally had a simplistic zero-sum view of the distinctions between socialism and capitalism, and I have since discovered that the reality - exemplified by online behavior - is more subtle than my cartoonish worldview."
News at 11?
-Styopa
More correct to say, it has historically broken down at different scales in different times and places, and has never successfully been implemented on a national scale.
Well define national scale. The iroque nation were communist society and there lived over 300 000 people under it.
It somehow brings a smile to my face, reading this article and the reactions to it.
People tend to imagine that ideas mustremain static in order to remain "true", somehow; I wonder why that is? You can see it with religion - it's always about what Jesus REALLY said, or trying to figure out what the first Christians believed and practiced; but reality is not like that, it changes all the time and we acquire new knowledge every day - or if we don't, there is something wrong with us. So why should ideas remain static? Shouldn't our faith, hah, evolve?
And the same goes for political ideologies and philosophies. Just because Karl Marx's definition became popular, that doesn't have to be the final word about that matter. Whatever else he wanted, I'm pretty sure his ambition was to push towards a better and more fair society - if he had lived today, I doubt he would have come up with exactly the same thing, although the general drift would have been the same.
Capitalism and Communism as ideologies are just formalisations of two fundamental - let's call them instincts - that humans have: the instinct for individual survival, the egotism or "capitalism", and the instinct to care for others, our offspring and in the form of cooperation. Both give huge evolutionary advantages and both are almost as old as life itself. Everybody can understand that individual survival is necessary in order to produce offspring, but cooperation is fundamental to life in a more subtle way - indeed, it happens even down to the molecular level in every living cell, and it would be hard to imagine life at all without it. Plus, it has been "reinvented" over and over, when the first cells arose as a cooperation of molecules, when multicellular life forms arose, and when social animals have arisen several times over time.
The struggle between Capitalism and Communism is no more than yet another manifestation of the same; but we can't do without either, so instead of squabbling and stupidly calling "the others" evil or worse, we should get on with finding a sensible and sustainable balance. And on the way to achieving that, one of the things we have to learn is that there is nothing inherently wrong with either Communism or Capitalism, both are valuable contributors to a good society.
So yes, open source and the internet are indeed expressions of communism; a good form of communism that doesn't insist on enslaving, but strives to liberate.
The key is that the Internet is Infrastructure. The tools we develop on it to organize ourselves are just Infrastructure. Open Source software, OSes and libraries are Infrastructure. It makes sense that individuals will sometimes collaborate in their own self interest to build common infrastructure, because ultimately it results in more benefit to individuals in the form of increased economic activity. If you're going to call the Internet Communist, you might as well also tar roads, bridges, water systems, sewage...
Many think it should all be privatized, but this is a fringe view and the view of the majority is that some infrastructure is best implemented as some kind of collective endeavor, and that this is fine and normal. Communism is just a scare-word to make you think that this is somehow not good and normal.
Interesting insight. The key I think is that what is defined as infrastructure not something objective, but is subjectively defined by the particular society. For example, in my opinion, water systems, education (including universities) and health care all are necessary infrastructure of a society, and so have to be controlled and owned socially. Yet, the water system in my town is privatized, the better schools are privately owned, health care gets privatized and so on.
Very well said, thank you. While I think that the only just purpose of government is infrastructure, the only point I would clarify is that the only thing that makes government special is that they are the one company whose actions can not ever be accused of being criminal, from taking in the form of taxes, to the use of force to compel people to do things. Smith and many other Free Market supporters speak of the invisible hand of the economy. Government is often an invisible gun. In any argument that begins with "The government needs to..." should simply be replaced with "The use of violence is necessary because...". I think this would make many debates go much more smoothly, and also much more honest about what we expect the "government" to do.
You have to remember that Adam Smith's government was a different one than the (more or less) democratic government of today: Smith talked about feudalism and its constrains to society (and economy).
as long as no one can force me to work for others on the net talking about "dot-communism" proves a fundamental lack of understanding.
Soon...
Brought to you cortesy of Dot Stalin.
For the record, not a big fan of Smith. Very boring read (The Wealth of Nations), never really been able to get though it at all. As far as The Invisible Hand, I have mostly heard Ron Paul make reference to it, and attribute it to Smith. So as far an a form of government as opposed to an economic theory, my understanding is very incomplete. From the period, I LOVED, could not put down, The Theory of Money and credit when I read it, but am presently in the middle of Human Action which I am finding even more enjoyable. I think Jonathan Gullible by Ken Schoolland is really what Atlas Shrugged should have been (or at least what I am sure everyone else wished it had been), and as much as I enjoy Ayn Rand's storytelling, I think anyone can see that with regard to the idea of moral egoism, Max Stirner predates Rand by over 100 years. Maybe I need to put Wealth of Nations back on my list, cause that sounds interesting.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!