Slashdot Mirror
The Relationship Between FOSS and Democracy
An anonymous reader writes "Free software is about freedom. So it shouldn't be any surprise that the ideals behind the free software movement have spread to the place where freedom is most affected: government. The old definition of e-democracy is, basically, 'using computers in politics and governance.' So a politician sending out a batch e-mail is e-democracy. The new movement is about removing the power from politicians and making governance collaborative. The analogy to FOSS is remarkable: think of the current governments as the old guard computing companies, and the collaborative governance movement as the geeks with crazy notions of a different way of organizing things. FOSS looked like an impossible pipe-dream when it started. Tell that to the Apache group today."
Why invent words that have a perfect substitute?
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Are we going to use Twitter and Facebook to arrange a schedule when we're going to all take turns guarding the prisoners, patching the roads, cleaning the sewers, and all that stuff that government does through that old-fashioned bureaucracy? I mean, we're "making governance collaborative," overthrowing the old-guy system of doing things, right? So from now on, we'll just send out a tweet when someone robs a bank, and handle the police work on it *collaboratively*.
Surely everyone is willing to do some actual *WORK*, right, instead of just lazily shooting your digital mouth off on a blackberry or iPad keyboard? Surely we all realize that *REAL* governance takes actual time and effort, no?
Wait, what is that? ...is that crickets I hear?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You completely missed the point.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
it doesn't matter, politicians will always *^%$ the little guy.
Is this the same thing a guy has been spamming in his .sig in the last months (years, maybe)?
The "point" to me sounded like a bunch of bullshit cyberspeak about how the internet is going to turn government into a big drum circle where we all join hands and sing songs of peace and love.
It's the same shit we've been hearing since the mid-90's. And yet government today still seems the same bunch of douchebags, doing the same evil shit that it was before--only now politicians send out tweets instead of flyers.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...not to mention the requirement of some semblance of intelligence on the part of those governing (the masses in this case), otherwise we end up with either some sort of oligarchy (like FOSS) or a complete welfare state... er... oh crap.
You cannot fork government, you are not free to change to your liking; You cannot use a different government than your neighbor does, you are not free to pick.
The form of democracy used in most countries is everything but freedom. Sure, you are free to vote on some guy that might share opinions/thoughts/ideals, based on the propaganda they put out. But after that, the person you voted on has free play till the next elections. At that point, you handed over part of your freedom.
I know I had Politics turned off on my front page.
Did that get broken as well as the checking comments?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
FOSS is about the freedom of the code, not you. Because information wants to be free!
No, the point is FOSS will help us become an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We'll take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting. By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more...
So a politician sending out a batch e-mail is e-democracy. The new movement is about removing the power from politicians and making governance collaborative. The analogy to FOSS is remarkable:
Wow, what a WTF moment when I read that. Politicians who spam help make government collaborative and that's analogous to FOSS.
What
The
Fuck
????
And I don't mean "Win The Future". What kind of "brilliant" politician uses WTF to describe anything?
And in other ways, FOSS and democracy are opposites. The biggest aspect that pops into mind is force: nobody is forced to use FOSS against their wishes. FOSS is almost always compatible with proprietary implementations (that is, a proprietary implementation can re-implement whatever FOSS does). With democracy, there is always the tyranny of the majority: if 50% + 1 want something, everyone must go along by force. That strikes me much more like proprietary software than FOSS, where a single implementation is the only implementation (such as needing perfect MS Office compatibility).
FOSS is much more like liberty or anarchy than democracy. No one forces you to use FOSS, but you are free to do so.
Be relentless!
I'm not particularly an advocate of what the article is suggesting, but essentially it's direct democracy rather than representative. You clearly didn't read the article too thoroughly.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
Surely everyone is willing to do some actual *WORK*, right, instead of just lazily shooting your digital mouth off on a blackberry or iPad keyboard?
Right.. because we don't want it to be easy to participate in democracy...
It's precisely those folks sitting at home shooting off their mouths that makes democracy work. The ability for *anyone* to participate in the process is what makes the system great. Sure, there will be crackpots. There will be trolls. There will be people exploiting the system. But what I liked about the Internet (of old) was that everyone could be on common ground.
The other piece is free and open information. Rather than hiding laws in the locked filing cabinet in the basement, putting the information on the web means that everyone can peek at it. Anyone can dissect it. Some legislation may never be seen, but the mere fact that it *can* be seen is half the battle.
Obvious flamebait, but I'll bite.
"They" don't use the GPL, some use the GPL in order to try to guarantee freedom for the end users.
The GPL only affects developers of software, not end users. If you don't like the GPL. then don't use it and write the stuff yourself.
The "point" to me sounded like a bunch of bullshit cyberspeak about how the internet is going to turn government into a big drum circle where we all join hands and sing songs of peace and love.
I don't think you're reading it right. Consensus governance is a valid technique and has nothing to do with hippie love fests (except that yes, it is more peaceful than authoritarian rule by threat of violence). Try reading the linked article again.
It's the same shit we've been hearing since the mid-90's. And yet government today still seems the same bunch of douchebags, doing the same evil shit that it was before--only now politicians send out tweets instead of flyers.
That is exactly what the Slashdot story says: e-democracy is about politicians sending tweets (etc.). Collaborative governance is a new formation that is in its infancy. Give it a few years.
The union (as in set theory, not politically) between FOSS and government (at any level) is not as large as some would like to think or have us believe, due largely that software's relationship to government is simply that it's just another tool. Ideally, while government can advocate for a particular tool set, the reality of government's obligation as an influencer of commerce (directly and indirectly) combined with its role as a regulator of commerce (again, directly and indirectly) leads to the conclusion that government should be no more an advocate of FOSS than it should be of proprietary software. This is particularly true in the United States where corporations producing proprietary software could have Equal Protection grounds for arguing against being unilaterally excluding from bidding on contracts or providing unsolicited RFP's where companies producing FOSS products are not restricted.
FOSS is a hammer. Does government look like another nail? Direct democracy will still be mob rule, despite all efforts to exact psychological change through software. Making every issue available through collaborative democracy will have the same result as in most representative democracies: widespread apathy to minor issues, and great interest in major ones. This is evidenced by the low voter turnout for local elections, because local issues appear inconsequential to the average voter (until tax time rolls around). This will not change; in fact, it becomes worsened as the information overload will probably cause even more people to withdraw even their occasional participation. The resulting chaos would probably result in a pendulum swing of authoritarian government to the first faction or individual promising they will restore order.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If FOSS is about freedom why do they use the GPL?
Dictatorships often call themselves "Democratic Republic of". In the same way, advocates of the GPL like to talk about "Freedom" and the "Free Open Source Movement" when there is a perfectly good Open Source Software movement that is independent of a specific license or philosophy.
The FOSS movement is not about freedom but rather a specific philosophy or agenda pushed by the GNU foundation.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Problems with out government? Besides peeps can hold positions for a lifetime, is that that too many people have power they shouldn't.
If everyone worked for the governement (say 20 hours a week), and our basics of life (electricty, housing, healthcare, etc) where covered by that, then we'd have less crime because everyone's basics are met.
Also, don't let peeps hold the same positions for life. 1 Senate Term, 1 Congress term, etc.
Give candinates taht are running the same amount of TV time, and the same amount of money to do their campaigns on. No more raising money, no spending more then anyone else. Discuss the issues in public forums.
2 Party system? Has to go. Electorial system? Has to go. Time to get to a government of the people, ran by the people.
Be seeing you...
I vote that Skye should be chastised for smoking way more than her share of the weed this week.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
He is talking about "government", you are talking about the "public sector".
Because the GPL means you have to share the freedoms you receive with others.
BSD-style licenses allow you to take those freedoms away, and others to take the gift you grant them and keep it to themselves. If that's your bag, fine, no-one forced you to give your sources away to anyone who would profit from them, just as no-one forces you to choose GPL code to save time on your implementation and reciprocate in exchange.
If FOSS is about freedom why do they use the GPL?
Because it gives you the freedom to do just about anything you want, except take away the same level of freedom from others. This way total freedom is maximized.
I am frankly surprised someone has heard of the GPL and doesn't know this. If you did know this and just don't like it because you feel that you would gain something from placing restrictions on what others may do with your code that the GPL wouldn't allow, well, you have the freedom to release your code under a different license.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Because information wants to be free!
Is anyone else tired of the way that gets mindlessly repeated, but almost no one ever quotes it in context? The full quote is "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other".
Call me a pessimist, but how come my visions of e-democracy involve getting an RFID chip implanted in my butt, getting finger-printed and having my picture taken every time I travel more than a few kilometers from home, and surveillance of every financial transaction that I have ever made in my life. Cash will be banned; only electronic cards issued by the government will be valid for payments. And: "Sorry, our e-Scans of your brain show that you do not 'conform to the norm' and must be executed. But don't worry! Scans of your body indicate that your organs are compatible with a number of folks waiting for a donor on our lists! In dying, you will be helping others!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
From the linked article:
Collaborative governance is not directly comparable to traditional direct democracy, which is usually a majority rule system used on only a few major issues. By comparison, collaborative governance is a consensus system intended to be used on all issues affecting a community, with the implicit understanding that anyone not participating on a particular issue consents to allow others to decide the issue.
And me without my mod points today to mod you down into oblivion. You've completely missed the point. This is about getting involved the legislative side. When's the last time you saw your favorite politician working a garbage truck?
Hopefully someone has better mirror links of the ogg videos. FOSDEM tok them down temporarily to re-encode and upload higher quality at a later date. But Eben Moglen gave a really good keynote at FOSDEM a few days ago that's highly relevant to this subject matter. http://fosdem.org/2011/schedule/event/software_freedom is the event link. Does anyone have a good mirror of the video yet?
What's next, front page coverage of Michael "Your mom's face" Kristlepeet?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Only a few governments who have large commercial backing will ever get out of beta. Most of the rest will languish due to petty squabbles between project leaders and the voices of the community will lately be ignored. When the community members aren't blown off they will be told to submit a path. Or quit bitching.
There will be fragmentation, personality cults and holy wars all the time.
Actually, that sounds about like how the world at large works now, anyway.
* Denied. Non-notable.
But... the future refused to change.
A lot of Open Source is bankrolled by big corporations. IBM and Novell, for example, have put a lot of investement into FOSS.
with most modern democracies, the most successful ones will be puppetized. While the developers will praise their newfound freedom from on high, corporations from motorolas draconian hardware to oracles draconian leadership will ensure the freedom rebranded slowly is never questioned, the fighters and pioneers merely enshrined and marginalized, and the product continues to be consumed. as thomas jefferson is to richard stallman, so will the patriot act be found in the models of the cloud. You are free in this new open source democracy. Free to do exactly as your told.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Currently, FOSS projects are not governed by collaborative governance.
They suffer from the same flaws as other representative democracies.
"FOSS looked like an impossible pipe-dream when it started. Did you know that?"
Wow, they took it quite well.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
I'm sorry, but as royally fucked up as the system is today...I can't imagine the rule of law being passed directly to The People.
Seriously...think about how fucking retarded the average person is. Now give them a direct vote and say in EVERYTHING.
Imagine if you will the army of Glen Beck/Sarah Palin worshippers being whipped into a fucking frenzy when the next gay marriage/stem cell research/whatever comes up & they're the only fuckers that show up. Or imagine a frenzy of Libertarian Freetards coming online en-masse when NASA's budget comes up for a vote. Imagine a bunch of hippie leftists coming out huge and giving all the illegals in Arizona free citizenship. No matter the issue...the people that froth at the mouth about it are always the only ones that show up.
Sorry...but Democracy is the worst form of government on the planet, except for all the other forms of government. In some ways...it is barely tolerable that these un-informed politically-polarized morons get to vote once every four years...imagine an America where the issues are decided by the biggest fucking nutjobs. Fuck that shit.
We do need to fix the system...but direct democracy is a fast path to fucking us all harder than the corrupt politicians do today.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
No, the point is FOSS will help us become an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We'll take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting. By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more...
eerily similar to how Debian has done it for decades, with some minor differences.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
IMO, there's only one branch of government suitable for pure FOSS types.
I could see elements of FOSS working in the congressional setting, if you could get the lawyers to agree. After all, making law is somewhat like coding, and could be made a lot more like it if the legal community would accept the formulation of standard legal clauses that could be automatically reasoned about, a la automata and compilers.
OTOH, driving ambulances and paving roads is more like what Redhat and kin do, analogically. They may hire the occasional FOSS type, but it's executive-branch duty: to get the law out there, support it and make it work.
And there's no freaking way I'd ever hand over the judiciary to FOSS types.
Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Nope, but I'm starting to get tired of the mindless "I'm so smart! No one else knows that this quote came from a larger work! It can't possibly stand on its own!" response.
It's precisely those folks sitting at home shooting off their mouths that makes democracy work. The ability for *anyone* to participate in the process is what makes the system great.
No.
The ability for anyone to participate is what makes it fail. It leads to results based on sound-bites and emotions instead of reality and serious consideration of the issues.
The perfect example of this is the Oregon initiative process. Anybody can get an initiative on the ballot to do almost anything (legal and constitutional, and sometimes that's not a limit either). Just get enough people to sign a petition, it gets on the ballot.
Then the people who can make the most warm-fuzzy happy feelings about their idea, or scare the people into opposing the other side, win.
Drugs are bad, n'kay? Let's mandate prison sentences and take the discretion away from judges, n'kay? Let's raise taxes on stuff that isn't used by the majority of people -- it won't cost YOU anything! Oh, THAT idea came from awful people from New York, so ignore any consideration of the merits of the idea, vote NO!
Expand that to the federal level. It was most remarkable to read a series of letters to the editor of a local activist paper commenting on how great it was for students to get involved in the last presidential election. Then some of them wrote in saying they felt great about doing it, even though they didn't have the time to learn anything about the candidates.
No, getting to the right answer is seldom the same as getting to the warm-fuzzy feel-good-all-over result that getting everyone, even those who don't really care about something, to vote comes up with.
DeToqueville predicted it; e-democracy will fulfill it. Any democracy can exist only until the people realize they can vote taxes onto everyone else. Big bad rich people, for one.
You seem to have confused public sector employment with governance. They're completely different concepts.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Let's create a budget ballot spreadsheet in FOSS. The spreadsheet ballot is online, and it limits you to 100% of revenues. Every citizen selects the programs and departments they want to fund. All other items are marked unfunded.
Once the ballots are in, all the choices are averaged together and the final budget is produced by computer.
Viola, a balance budget by the people. No stupid political rhetoric. No party-line votes. No status-quo unless the people themselves said so.
This method will probably result in a substantial reduction in many government programs, since we are not permitting borrowing. If the land war in Asia is defunded, for example, then it's up to the politicians to make this work. Finally, they can work for the will of the people instead of the next election. Figuring out how to kill an unwanted and unfunded program is worth their time instead of pitting us against one another.
Go, go Direct Democracy!
The web links point to some vanity site run by a bunch of idealists who appear not yet disillusioned by the inevitable flood of douchbaggery that flocks to any government enterprise, or the arrival of difficult people who quibble endlessly over spelling.
If they think vested interests have too much of a hold on government now, just wait till the system they envision were in place. By definition, it would consist of NOTHING BUT vested interest groups.
At best those issues we vote on, and the issues our representatives vote on might be decided by direct participation via electronic means.
Much beyond that is pretty much not possible, as the GP points out, no one is likely to show up for road patching duty just because a tweet went out, and fewer still pick up the garbage, and nobody would want to cross the Mississippi on a bridge designed and built by the Birkenstock anti-motor vehicle crowd .
Executive branch duties would still need to be done by professionals with proper training and authority.
Who would want to submit to mob rule when it comes to Trial? The Judiciary stays too.
So the best you can accomplish is collaborative electronic construction of legislation and e-voting.
I can't imagine collaborative legislation construction on a scale the size of a Switzerland, let along the US. We would have to elect collaborators just to keep the wiki from being a reversion war. What's the point of that, we have elected collaborators now. How would that change anything?
So we are down to e-voting. About the only thing that could work.
It might work on more issues than we currently use voting for, such as passing ordinances, allocating tax dollars among discretionary projects (parks vs street lights vs snow removal), and deciding what should be the state bird and flower. But anything close to giving Joe Sixpack the keys to the treasury will result in the tragedy of the commons all over again.
You simply can't fork Government.
Wrapping something up in a layer of grandiosity does not add any degree of practicality.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
So, you're saying this about the IETF as well? Because that's the model of governance being talked about here.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
The "point" to me sounded like a bunch of bullshit cyberspeak about how the internet is going to turn government into a big drum circle where we all join hands and sing songs of peace and love.
I'll be the first to admit that a lot of Progressive activism does suffer from its (often impractical) idealism. That said, the assertion that the Internet, with its FOSS-style approach to standards and its preference for unmediated communication, really is a democratising force.
The problem is, the powers-that-be are becoming aware of this fact, and they don't like it. I may be getting cynical in my old age, but recently all I've been seeing is how susceptible to coercion modern networks are. I've written a series of newspaper columns and blog posts on the topic. Here's the basic take-away:
Will the revolution be twittered? If Egypt is any example, it's increasingly likely that it won't. That said, Internet protocols and FOSS philosophy still hold some important ground. They can be used to organise groups and share experience/intelligence. Not all hope is lost.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Nice to talk about a troll in a reply to the first post, just to troll your response up to the top.
>>>it's direct democracy rather than representative
Which means all it will take is a simply 51% vote for the Conservative Christians (who are the majority) to exterminate those nasty Muslims, and playboy subscribers, and anyone else they hate..... just like they did during the Catholic Inquisitions and witch-burnings of the 1400s-1600s.
Yeah. Great idea. (frowns). BTW if I sound a little bitter, it's because I just finished reading an article about a Tea Party-affiliated "Minuteman" that busted into a Hispanic home and shot an 8-yr-old girl just because she was brown.
With nutjobs like this in an existence, I do NOT want a democracy where they can simply vote to kill/jail people whenever they want. I want a Supreme LAW that will protect my and my neighbors' rights from the typical vote-casting idiot.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
When you say *WORK* you mean work that is worth paying for. No-one is against that.
We're going to have a public scrutiny of all decisions, we're going to stream the videos of the parliament meetings, we're going
to have instant polls of what people thinks, we're going to have a government for the people.
If your idea of *WORK* is to get tax-paid travel allowance, rent allowance, expenses, secretariat, and round it up with lobby money, then
you're either a member of parliament abusing the system, or a fool.
And... The reasons people may choose one of the GPL licenses are explained in the actual text of the licenses which are conveniently available for anyone to read and evaluate here and here.
The question "If FOSS is about freedom why do the use the GPL" seems to imply "but why don't they do what *I* want, instead?", to which the answer is, "you don't get to choose because you didn't do the work."
Democracy is not a form of government, but is instead a more universal idea about how decisions should be made.
If you look at the actual implementations of the movement-without-a-name that circulates at places like Crisis Camp and City Camp and whatever Camp, it is not about dumping one government in favor of another, but instead about creating little pockets of opportunity for transparent, opt-in and inclusive decision making to create policy. No revolution! Just little tweaks, here and there. Better over time.
Where these solutions work well compared to older methods, they evolve, are replicated (or forked!) and sometimes prosper. But it does take problem solving and patience and creativity to start it up. In that respect, this is very much like FLOSS. If that sounds worthy of your energy and effort, hit the link below and find some people like you.
http://forums.e-democracy.org/
This.
Posting anon here because of the ridiculous herd-think that is rampant on Slashdot. Blind leading the blind and all that nonsense is very tiring when they stampede on your opinion through moderation abuse and intolerance. Shame on you!
What most doesn't consider when talking about democracy, is that we don't have true democracy by design. Ie., we absolutely don't want every issue voted on by every citizen, or gathering a jury from the people on every case.
There are many reasons we have representative democracy. That means, we vote in representatives of the people who stay in power for a considerable time (at least 4 years), and can monitor the changes, fix things when it breaks and be responsible. But the most important part is that the representative are mandated to make policies for everyone, which often means pampering for minorities especially, because minorities are often forgotten. Minorities, minorities, minorities. In the places this is abused or forgotten, you'll often have revolutions or dividing of countries!
In true democracy, the "tyranny of the majority" will simply create a mob rule, where the minorities are guaranteed to always lose out. The mob is a poor policymaker, blames everyone else but itself and has a poor memory.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but you'll need a very good moderation system in place in order for it to work, which caters to all groups, especially minority groups. If it doesn't work on /., then I'm afraid it can't for sure work in politics!
Believe it or not, without the internet and blackberries, the protests in Tunusia and Egypt would not have gained the traction it did.
Now it seems that you are referring to the situation in the USA, but that is a bit more complicated than going into the streets and throwing rocks as most people are invested into the system and have no need to go into the streets to throw rocks.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
quickly send an email to the Athenians... oh, wait, those have been dead for a few thousand years... and they died thinking THEY invented it, poor souls.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
The parent post's analogy between FOSS and government is especially apt if one substitutes "clean toilets" with "write documentation" and "guarding the prisoners" with "usability testing".
a match made in heaven. both are obtuse things dominated by assholes who think very highly of themselves and never had to live with the crap they're making.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Call it e-government or whatever, but I want to see which public entities are paying for what, and meeting with whom.
Without transparency, any e-gov initiative is DOA... a "collaborative" movement with no transparency? Isn't that just like American Idol?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Submissions like this are an embarrassment. They make Slashdot feel so outdated, as if it's stuck in a 1999 time warp.
There are still neo-hippies out there who think "FOSS" is going to change everything and turn the world into a gigantic, collaborative effort. Today, FOSS is mostly used by capitalists like Google (an advertising company) to support some closed-source, proprietary business (Google's search and advertising engine). In the past, they would have had to write that software themselves. Now, they just use what other people wrote for free to keep the old system turning.
The linked wiki article is a haven of fuzzy, feel-good phrases like "Creates lasting solutions," "Transforms citizenship, " and the all-important "Openness" buzzword which don't actually describe how this theoretical government is supposed to function in practical terms. It feels a lot like slacktivism--that trend which permeates Facebook where users post links to causes on their wall to make themselves feel like they're activists while not actually accomplishing anything. Apparently, this "Metagovernment,"as they call themselves, assumes people will use Twitter to announce house fires and hope someone else shows up to put them out.
The multiple comparisons to FOSS programmers and code are goofy and naive, and there are baseless statements like, "FOSS tends to improve and evolve extremely rapidly, contrasting with privative or closed source software, which usually do not." There are countless examples of FOSS projects that stagnate, refuse to evolve, die off due to lack of commitment, and so forth.
The most damning counterargument is that, historically, decisions made by committee are notoriously slow and inflexible. Representative leaders are needed not only to handle the daily responsibilities of governance that a regular citizen couldn't handle due to having a real life to deal with, but also to enforce singular agendas. This article makes the same silly assumption that many FOSS fans do--that everyone is a programmer and wants to modify code.
Just like how not everyone is a programmer, not everyone wants to write legislation. There will always be some form of representative government. The article is a bunch of naive buzzwords with nothing substantive actually describing the specifics of this hypothetical form of government.
Happen to have a link on that "story"... Using the criteria you posted, I'm unable to locate it.
Yeah. Great idea. (frowns). BTW if I sound a little bitter, it's because I just finished reading an article about a Tea Party-affiliated "Minuteman" that busted into a Hispanic home and shot an 8-yr-old girl just because she was brown.
I'll do 'ya 19 times (or 3000 times?) better. I just finished reading an article about Islamic-affiliated hijackers that crashed a couple of airplanes into the World Trade Center towers, killing more than 3000 people just because ... they existed. Another couple hundred died in a cornfield in Pennsylvania because they ... were on the wrong airplane at the wrong time.
Another article, this time an Islamic-affiliated suicide bomber who got on a crowded bus and killed women and children just for riding the bus. The ones who didn't die in the blast immediately were torn up with warfarin-laced shrapnel and bled out on the street.
Yes, I agree, let's base our system of government, and our hatred, on the action of one person (or 19 people) who were somehow affiliated with something we want to hate. It's much better than any democracy.
With nutjobs like this in an existence, I do NOT want a democracy where they can simply vote to kill/jail people whenever they want.
Nutjobs come in all shapes, colors, and affiliations. But please, continue your anti-Christian rant. It's lots of fun to read.
Meanwhile, back in reality, half the time I see a story on Slashdot about a country adopting FOSS it's an autocracy (eg, here, here, and here). Of course plenty of democratic governments (eg, the city of Paris) use open source software and good for them, but it's the silliest kind of naive techno-utopianism to equate FOSS with democracy.
"Collaborative governance" will never happen, and it would, in fact, be less efficient. Decision-by-committee is the slowest, most biased, most inflexible, and most ineffective form of decision-making there is. People elect representatives to handle the burden of governance just like people hire lawyers to handle the burden of understanding the law and pay doctors to handle the burden of knowing how to successfully perform heart surgery. Politicians posting tweets isn't exactly some sort of historic paradigm shift of governance. There were newsletters before Twitter.
You're tired of it because revealing the context of your beloved quote removes its fist-raising, anarchist impact.
The GPL "takes freedoms away" just as much as you claim the BSD-style license does. Furthermore, such a claim about the BSD license is inaccurate, because the original BSD-liences source code still exists no matter what some company chooses to do with it. Nothing has been taken away except access to the changes the company made, which could be replicated in the original source code by others if they so choose. True freedom.
The public election system is suboptimal and should be eliminated. Firstly it self-selects power hungry individuals who have more incentive in their political careers than public good, this drives them to such stupidities as pursuing dumb actions just to "look busy" including security theaters. Overspending to look good then passing the bill to the next major, etc. And there are, of course, the lobbies.
I propose a system of random selection instead of popular election. Randomly select a group of able citizens as representatives of their community, not unlike the jury system for criminal trials, have them overlook the work of public servants and take charge of administrative actions.
But... the future refused to change.
...In Soviet Russia, social network unfriends you!
Seriously, the political climate could be deduced by examining who's image disappeared from May Day parade shots at the Kremlin
Have gnu, will travel.
But that is not true freedom. A BSD-style license allows access to the original code while permitting commercial changes. Nothing has been taken away, because the original source still exists, and others are free to implement their own version of closed-source commercial changes in the open source version if they choose. That is a true, "maximized" freedom compared to the GPL.
Democracy is a concept of governance by "We The People."
Democracy can never be tyranny. Democracy enfranchises and protects all citizens equally, by the disenfranchisement and defense against all forms of institutional corporate, political, racial, religious demagoguery, dogma, genocide. Democracy empowers the welfare of "We The People." Democracy governs the unthinking dogmatic institutions of business, politics, religion... in order to prevent the usurpation of governing power from "We The People."
We The People can be a great democracy.
A gang of dogmatic losers/fanatics are never a democracy. A gang of dogmatic losers/fanatics can be called a bunch of idiots, bigots, fools, mental and emotional cripples, but such bunches are much like insects searching for a queen to serve, or a master by which to be serviced.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
What I find completely amazing is this simple fact: Most well-run and successful open source projects seem to bear very little relationship to a true democracy (i.e., majority rule) in form or function.
The head of these projects is often referred to as a "benevolent dictator" - he whose word is law. The contributors cooperate (and sometimes compete, sometimes even via nasty political infighting) in what is in essence, a ruthless meritocracy-slash-technocracy, led by that 'benevolent dictator.'
1000 Joe Q Publics writing to the Linux kernel mailing list will be easily outweighed by a simple "NO" from Linus, or any single one of the other frequent kernel contributors. 1000 Joe Q Publics complaining about how some feature didn't get implemented yet will be told, "Go fuck yourself, we're not here to work for you, if you think it's that important, either write the code yourself, or wait until we decide to get to it." Last I checked, they weren't asking people to vote on which features to implement in the next version of the Linux kernel.
Openness and Democracy are often found together, and a well-run democracy requires an educated populace (which, in turn, requires information to be available to the populace so that they may be informed), but the two ideals are absolutely not identical. Opening up governance to "egalitarian collaboration" simply means that you'll see a lot more trolling, a few more Goatse bills, and god help us all if Anonymous decides to get involved in governance "for the lulz."
For 'it' to stand on its own, the meaning and intention should not be altered by examining the context in which 'it' was made. Refusing to acknowledge the context results in a level of stupidity I would not like to see managing political issues.
Perhaps someone is suffering from deliberate ignorance? Context and environment can alter the effect in the way facts are used. Now say "Thank you, harlows_monkeys"
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
You could have something similar to Reddit, a grading system to see how much the Representatives *and* the People are truly comprehending the Material they are voting on, a voting System,obviously built around Instant-Runoff Voting or the Like for Officers, and possibly a 2/3rd "Republic" Lean toward the House and Senate, then a 1/3rd "Democratic" Lean toward FOSS. Each has a 1/3rd Share... and CANNOT do Anything without ALL THREE of Them being 'N Sync.
You could do numerous Things with free / open source Software and WORDS.
LEGISLATION is nothing more than Words used in a Society. LEGALESE *is* a Language for the LAW Society, and Citizens, or "Subjects".
If you choose to Subject Yourself to the System... then go ahead and vote.
I won't be voting until I get a System that I want.
Somebody needs to build the alternate System, tho. That's the problem.
If only I could program.... :(
Hi! I think you are referring in part to me.
But I think I should take issue with some of what you are claiming.
I certainly didn't link to "my" site in every discussion. I linked to the metagovernment site (which is a collaboration of a lot of people) in some relevant threads about politics and government.
But yes, I have to admit that I was spamming (not trolling), and so I stopped. Haven't done it for at least a month, probably more.
So if you are still seeing links to the metagovernment site, then that would indicate that some other people in the project, or sympathetic to it, have been linking to it. (Just like not every link to Fox is posted by Rupert.)
I can't speak for the others, but I certainly have a lot of interest in metagovernment, and I would like to see others have interest as well. So again by your definition, not trolling at all. Now is it spamming if I link to a site that further explains something I do believe in? Well, I suppose that's a matter of opinion. Like I said, my own opinion changed on that matter, so I stopped the behavior.
Truly sorry if I offended or otherwise had the opposite of the intended effect. Guess I just got a little excited. But then again, that's what moderation is for. I always posted as AC, so it only took a single down-mod for me to be removed from your sight. I guess mods usually didn't consider it trolling or spamming.
The men who flew the plane into a building didn't have a right to vote.
The Minutemen, KKK, Huffington Post, and other hate groups DO have the right to vote. The only thing that protects me is the Law, but that protection would disappear once we convert to a simple 51% majority rules Democracy (as the slashdot article is proposing).
As for the anti-Christian stuff, I wouldn't be able to criticize them (or Muslims) if they didn't do hateful things. Perhaps you should stop giving me examples - stop the hate
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
Excuse me... And if I had a huge Bankroll.
The Banks would never give you a loan to do something like this.
You're gonna have to take to the Streets if you want to get Money from the People and you're a good enough Educator and Organizer.
When I think about all the various methods and theories of governance that have been dreamed up or attempted throughout the years, I see one theme they all share. How do you fix the problems that plague us? Then look throughout history, what causes those problems? Egomania, greed, ignorance, natural disasters... basically the human condition. All these various attempts to solve these problems don't really attack the root causes of the issues. Instead it's a convoluted, often idiotic way to avoid dealing with difficult people and situations. People flourished and suffered then, people flourish and suffer now, and they'll flourish and suffer in the future.
If there's a system that can be made, then there's a system that can be broken. I can only imagine what would be devised in a FOSS like system of computerized policy making. But one thing will remain the same... shit goes in, shit comes out.
>>>Democracy can never be tyranny.
DISAGREE. It was a Demos (the people) voting to kill Socrates just because they didn't like his ideas. Sounds like tyranny to me.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
This is literally Wikipedia for government. Consensus will not be determined by everybody agreeing with each other, consensus will be determined by who has the most endurance in the argument.
I think you have to start by making a distinction between the institution of government and the process of governance in which government, business, and civil society all participate. The idea is, a FOSS-inspired change in the process might improve governance decisions.
I think of it as government of the ones who show up, and it already happens, to some extent, everywhere. In democracies, most of the decisions aren't made by elected officials, but by bureaucrats. The people doing the work. I recently spoke with a young woman who was a junior staffer in one of the highest offices of the executive branch in the George Bush administration. She said that most of the decisions made in the US capitol were actually made by people in their early twenties, just out of college, who were willing to work long hours for peanuts. If these young folks had majored in CS and Math instead of PoliSci and History, they'd have been coding instead of drafting legislation. (Joel Reidenberg and Laurence Lessig have both written cleverly on the parallels between code and law.) In authoritarian states, like for example China, the bureaucracy plays a similar role (wish I could find a reference quickly).
Most existing government structures keep some people away from the decision-making process. Law-makers hide the code of governance (the law) until it's ready to be shipped. Some of us (I don't know the metagovernment people, but I like the way they think) who are interested in both law and code think there's something to learn from FOSS. Maybe the process can be opened up. Let's acknowledge the underlying process of governance, which doesn't have much to do with voting, and more to do with people making decisions by default, because they're in the room when the question comes up.
There are plenty of problems with ideas like this. Of course, you probably don't start tinkering at a national level, but at a local level where the stakes are lower. Maybe the analogy between governance and coding is a false one. But you can't know until you give it a go, see what problems there are, and try to fix them.
Because the GPL means you have to share the freedoms you receive with others.
BSD-style licenses allow you to take those freedoms away
GPL explicitly takes freedoms away. BSD gives you *more* freedom. BSD allows you to interact with a lot more people who don't share your ideals as it gives you more freedom and places few restrictions, GPL (even more with V3) on the other hand forces any collaborator to conform to a much more restrictive set of ideals.
Total freedom maximized by the GPL? Bullshit. You need to go read the definition of freedom, then you can tell me where forcing someone to do something is a part of freedom.
Representative democracy became corrupt as the news media consolidated with the MPAA and other producers of fictional entertainment. People vote for candidates that they're familiar with on issues that they're familiar with, and the MPAA controls what the voters are familiar with. You can't run for federal elected office if your platform includes bringing balance back to copyright because balanced copyright would hurt the MPAA's profits, and the MPAA-controlled news channels would just deny you recognition.
Periodically, you have performance reviews (elections)
Since the introduction of mass media, these aren't performance reviews as much as popularity contests, especially at the primary level. Any candidate with a platform unfriendly to the movie studios who own the TV news media would get its campaign buried.
As for the anti-Christian stuff, I wouldn't be able to criticize them (or Muslims) if they didn't do hateful things.
That wooshing sound is the point flying right over your head. THEY didn't do hateful things. A few nutjobs that you are painting them all with did that. Your rant about Christians is as relevant to Christians as if you ranted at the easter bunny because your pet rabbit peed on the floor.
You completely missed the point.
And a most excellent job you did on explaining the point! Bravo!
I too no doubt "missed the point" by your definition, since I had similar questions as the GP after reading, and neither the article nor summary explain or answer much in any way.
But after your insightful response explaining exactly what the point was and how it was missed, my mind is changed.
Thank you Anon Color-GameBoy!
No.
Your post proves it.
Without this forum your voice might as well be silenced. It's a perfect microcosm of the democratic process here. The readers vote on what they think is insightful or a troll or interesting. If an idea resonates with the people then it will be amplified by the teeming millions. Sure, if you can motivate people, incite people, then your voice is amplified. Others start listening. Others start perfecting the idea. Now some ideas are flawed, but the mere fact that it resonates with hundreds or thousands or millions means that it's a concern for those people.
Total freedom maximized by the GPL? Bullshit. You need to go read the definition of freedom, then you can tell me where forcing someone to do something is a part of freedom.
Maybe you can brush up on the definition of "force" sometime before suggesting anything to me.
You're not entitled to use someone else's work. If you want to use someone else's work and it's available under the GPL, you can decide whether you can live with the GPL. That's hardly forcing you to do anything. But if you do use the work licensed under the GPL, and decide to distribute it, you cannot then prevent others from doing the same.
Expecting you to take responsibility for the choices you make, such as using GPL-licensed works, is not an infringement on your freedom. You are so free, in fact, that you can shun the GPL entirely and find or create something more to your liking. Hate it all you like.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Was it really "the people" who voted to kill him? Oh, sure, it was SOME of the people. Not women, they couldn't vote. Not poor people, only land owners in Greece could vote. Not slaves, I mean, obviously, right? And another point, a small point: that happened around twenty five hundred years ago. We've matured as a species just a teensy bit since then, don't you think? Okay, I will admit that democracies, like any other group or individual human endeavor, can go horribly wrong and lead to oppression. But you shouldn't judge a style of government by cherry picking a few examples.
Technically, democracies can not be tyrannies in the same sense that apples can not be oranges. They are both fruit, but they are not the same fruit. You could say a democracy could be tyrannical, but a tyranny has a technical meaning closer to autocracy by theft.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
FOSS != Democracy, Collaboration, etc. and are not mutually exclusive. A government that worked like open-source software would be an absolute disaster, and I don't think I need to say why considering the large number of comments that explain it pretty well.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Then, the work is not free as in beer or as in speech, then is it? Now, STFU.
No matter how much you disagree, he's right, democracy can never be tyranny, by their very definitions.
A tyranny is "a government in which a single ruler (a tyrant) has absolute power".
A democracy is "rule by the people, especially as a form of government; either directly or through elected representatives".
So it was a democratic decision to kill Socrates.
Seriously...think about how fucking retarded the average person is.
The question is, have you thought about that? The average person's IQ is 100. Retards have an IQ of less than 70. So, I'm guessing yours must be somewhere in between?
Sorry...but Democracy is the worst form of government on the planet, except for all the other forms of government.
You do realise that the worst except all others is actually the best? Seriously, you need to learn to think before you speak. You call people stupid, but you don't sound too smart yourself.
We've matured as a species just a teensy bit since then, don't you think?
no, not even a little bit, threat of force is still the only thing that matters, everything else is governed by it.
Your comment points to an obvious solution, one which is actually feasible: start another news organization
How would one pitch this news organization's stream to the cable and satellite television operators? Recall that Comcast owns NBC News (TV news), CNBC (TV news), MSNBC (TV news), Universal City Studios (MPAA member), and the cable TV monopoly in several cities including mine. Time Warner was similar (CNN, HLN, Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line) before it spun off TWC. One could put it on the Internet, but people sit in a recliner and watch cable news; they don't habitually sit in a recliner and watch the Internet.
"So a politician sending out a batch e-mail is e-democracy."
Bollocks - it's spam.
tyranny
noun (plural tyrannies)
According to the Oxford's definition (and common English usage) a democracy can, in fact, be tyrannical. Unless you put so much weight on derivations that you want to claim all homosexuals are happy.
Please, stop unilaterally branding other people as "geeks." You may perceive them as members of your self-identified subculture, but many people who work in IT and other technical fields object to this stereotyping. Thanks.
Oh, look! We're in a constitutional convention! Anyone been reading the Federalist Papers? I thought not. Stick to computers. Governance is too complicated for geeks with no social skills.
The thing about the metagovernment project is that it has essentially the same problem with regular government: if you want to stay on top of the issues, it basically becomes a full time job. Most people simply don't have the interest in doing so, let alone other problems, such as time or energy.
The only thing about metagovernment that's different from regular government is that everyone else participating can simply run you over if you don't feel like participating, and then they can turn around and blame you for it, because if it really bothered you, you should have been fighting for it.
Vote Colonel Panic 2012!
I don't know why the mention of 'FOSS government' brings you to comment on 'everybody shooting their mouth on iPad'. Surely you can think better ways to use FOSS concepts in government. The first thing to come to my mind would be SVN for law: how did a specific law change, who did the changes, when, who first suggested it (list lobbyists), list all cases where it was applied, etc... Another would be data publication and visualization: any branch or office must publish some data on its work, and tools to look through it (yeah, that's very generic). FOSS electronic voting technology to avoid the treason of Bush I and II. And plenty of other _methods_.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Don't be such a party pooper, it'll work! I think we should do it! Oh, except I'm going to pay someone $1 to perform my 10 minutes of guard duty every year. I've got a great idea too, why don't like a few thousand of us pay $1 to one guy to take all of our turns and then he can just do that all year and we don't have to find a ton of people to fill in for out 10 minutes. We should really think about setting up an organization to handle paying him too so that they can make sure he actually signs in for our share of the guard time. We'll keep this internal just amongst ourselves and so this internal revenue organization should really look after it. Also is it possible to just have it taken out of my pay check so that I don't have to spend $0.30 on postage for a $1 wage?
Collaborative democracy doesn't need the net. It works equally well with people shouting at themselves in a barn. The point of representative democracy is to elect somebody who you trust to make the right decisions for you. Obviously it doesn't work as well as planned, but imagine the opposite: every one of your neighbours has to vote on whether or not that new parking lot gets made. I don't see e-democracy or meta government change that fundamental situation.
After all this time the FOSS brigade is supposed to rally around Apache? Where is the Linux desktop?
What I find completely amazing is this simple fact: Most well-run and successful open source projects seem to bear very little relationship to a true democracy (i.e., majority rule) in form or function.
The head of these projects is often referred to as a "benevolent dictator" - he whose word is law. The contributors cooperate (and sometimes compete, sometimes even via nasty political infighting) in what is in essence, a ruthless meritocracy-slash-technocracy, led by that 'benevolent dictator.'
The part that you're missing is that Linux can be forked by anyone, and the fork will have just as much legal power of the code as Linus has today (except for the trademark). In fact, Linus himself even encourages forks and the competition it brings.
The point being that Linus is the boss simply because *everyone wants him to be*. If someone who can do a better job comes a long, that's great, developers can follow that guy or gal instead. But that hasn't happened, even though anyone and everyone has the power to just start a competing movement (a true free market).
Compare this to the physical world were there is only one physical land, only one government, only one police, etc. You can't fork a country like you can fork code.
However, it would be excellent if we use the tools in front of us to open up for more direct participation from voters. There's a million different problems that I can think of, but _we have the technology_, so why not use it to create a more open democracy?
Life is Reality
If the majority of your countrymen really are gun-wielding moronic murderous racists, the form of government you have is pretty irrelevant, you're fucked anyway.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you really had proper one-person-one-vote direct democracy, any decision would be approved by a majority, and vocal minority groups would have nowhere near the influence they do now.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Believe it or not, without the internet and blackberries, the protests in Tunusia and Egypt would not have gained the traction it did. /quote.
That is an assertion rather than an argument. I think you'll find that people managed to organise even full-scale revolutions before the internet, places like Russia and Iran spring to mind.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
must check preview properly...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Who do you think creates and manages those public sector jobs? And of course it should be easy to participate in democracy. But on the other hand if collaborative government stands even the slightest chance of working, everyone participating in it must be willing to do their fair share of the work involved. In fact, it will never work. It sounds too much like communism, and humanity in it's current state is to selfish, short-sighted, and greedy to exhibit the altruism needed to make such a system work.
Democracy only initially gives equal rights to all citizens, but it can easily result in genocide...
All it takes is for the majority to democratically vote for genocide and thus the motion is carried, wether it be genocide against a minority group within the same country or against a foreign group.
One of the best quotes is "Democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep deciding whats for dinner". Democratically you can't argue with a clear 2/3 majority, but that isn't much consolation to the sheep.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
All forms of government tend to be judged by cherry picking a few examples... And many of these examples are not what they are claimed to be.
A democracy like any other form of government is prone to corruption, you start with everyone having the right to vote and the biggest group siezes power.... This group wants more power, so they use their majority to gradually erode the rights of the smaller groups and consolidate their power base.
Giving people a sense of power through the ability to vote also decreases the risk of civil unrest, people believe they have some power even if their vote means absolutely nothing. The more empowered people think they are, the less likely they are to revolt.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
God you're dumb. You really think tyranny only happens with just ONE person??? Apparently you've never heard of Tyranny by Oligarchy (several leaders), or Tyranny by Majority (51%).
A monarchist system is tyranny by oligarchs (the nobles/lords) while a democratic system is tyranny of the dominant class (in the US: white; christian) over the minorities (colored; non-christians).
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
If the killers are members of the Christian or Islamic church, then the members of said church are guilty by negligence ----- because they failed to keep their brothers in line. It's just the same as I cannot join the Nazi Party without also tarnishing myself with that dark, dark past. I am guilty by association with those murderers.
Or as Jesus said: "Do not let your brother sin, for his sin is thy sin as well."
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
Being able to fork is akin to secession: if you don't agree with me, you take your ball and go home. Thats not "democracy," that's anarchy - no authority has any power except that which is voluntarily given, and which may be taken away at a moment's notice for any reason at all.
I keep reading this "open up to more direct participation from voters" trope, but I have no idea what that means - do we reduce governance to simple mob rule, where everybody gets a vote and majority rules, and if you don't agree and want to secede, you better hope the majority you disagree with isn't inclined to object by force of arms? We already have mechanisms for people to participate in governance - run for election, get in touch with your elected representatives, write letters, advocate... What exactly is a wiki going to add to the mix that isn't there already in some other form?
It's a solution looking for a problem. I'm all for openness, but the problem of "closed-ness" has absolutely nothing to do with the TOOLS we use to participate in our government. Adopting open standards and increasing transparency are great, but without an interested population, installing a wiki does nothing: it's a problem of process, not a problem of technology.
That is why rights, law and a constitution are essential parts of democracy. We make broad rules based on principal to prevent abuse based on short term anger or bad judgement.
German is an interesting example. Thanks to fascism they now have very strong human rights laws. In particular no-one has the right to deny another their life. After 9/11 the government tried to bring in laws allowing the air force to shoot down highjacked passenger jets that were likely to be used as terrorist weapons. It was ruled unconstitutional because even though the passengers were likely to die anyway (assuming they can't overpower the terrorists) no-one has the right to take away their right to life. The result may be thousands of deaths instead of hundreds, but no-one can legally choose one over the other on behalf of the passengers.
What happens if a passenger decides to do something that will bring the aircraft down and kill everyone before it reaches its target is not entirely clear at this point.
Another example from Germany was a child kidnapping case a few years back. Some guy who it turned out was a serial kidnapper trapped two young girls in his house and tried to get ransom for one of them. He was arrested when he collected it but refused to tell the police where the girls were. They were worried because in similar cases the victims had starved to death while the criminal was in custody (in fact this had happened to two of his previous but at that time unknown victims when he did jail time for driving offences). The commander decided to threatened the guy with bodily harm unless he confessed, which he eventually did. The found the girls, both dead. Later the commander was convicted of violating the criminal's rights, even though he didn't actually touch him.
Strong laws are enforceable and effective.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I love the responders who missed the clue bus.
Are you trying to claim we use the same level of threat of force we always have? Because we used to torture people to death pretty frequently. Now we have trial by jury and laws against cruel and unusual punishment. I'm not buying your hypothesis.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Funny thing, in our democracy it was not the majority that seized power, it was a very small and wealthy minority.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The Minutemen, KKK, Huffington Post, and other hate groups DO have the right to vote.
You watched Sesame Street right? Then sing it with me! "One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just isn't the same!" To be specific, one of these things is not actually a hate group, and I challenge you to provide evidence that would convince an impartial observer that it is a hate group. I'll wait. But I won't hold my breath.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Does that make Obama monkey boy ?
No. Your post proves it. Without this forum your voice might as well be silenced.
That is absolute nonsense. This forum is not the only place to speak, and it carries zero weight in the local or state political process. Believe me, my voice appears where it matters, and here, too.
This forum does prove that the ability to speak and the value of that speech are unrelated concepts, and thus that the ability to vote and the value of that vote are likewise.
Claiming that it is good that anyone can vote is silly. People who vote who have no interest in voting causes results by random selections on their part, or selections based on superficial analyses of the issues and candidates. This is not good democracy, this is lunacy.
I agree that the democratic system isn't working optimally (in general) and that it needs change, but changing the government is a pretty major task.
What I'm thinking is that it would be positive for the whole system if more people got involved (an interested population, in your words). Making it available to people by making it easy to participate encourages involvement.
E.g. in Norway we're considering home voting: Letting people vote in front of their computer during elections. (Yes there are multiple problems with it, but it's being considered.) The idea being that making it *that* easy to vote (you don't even need to raise your eyes from the laptop to vote) will increase the voting participation, which again will increase the political interest (especially amongst young people), benefiting democracy as a whole.
But it's not just ease and availability that I'm thinking about. We should use our minds to "help" the politicians write smart and better laws, reach out and discuss with politicians what the consequences of their laws really are, and effectively open up lobbying to the entire population.
I haven't put enough thought into it to come up with anything more tangible than that, but the point is that technology opens up lots of interesting possibilities that are explored in business, but rarely in government. Seeing how important the government actually is, that's something that I think should change.
Life is Reality
I cannot say the same of Islam simply due to a lack of familiarity, but you realize, of course, that there is not one "Christian" church, right?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
We do collaborate on cleaning the toilets and paving the roads. They're called "taxes", maybe you've heard of them.
and it's far away from democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Open_Source
we have PR friendly ways of using force, but it is still the only reason why society works.
The problem is sociopaths, bullies and tyrants. If not for that small minority, the rest of us would not need force to be good citizens. Society works because we are excellent cooperators by nature. Society is not something imposed by force, it has evolved in our species because it provides a vast advantage in fitness.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Well, I may be dumb, but I'm really not your God, and at least I'm smart enough to know the difference between literal and figurative meanings, do my research and provide citations.
You must be thinking of the figurative meaning of tyranny. As such, it does indeed mean cruel and oppressive government or rule. However, since this article is about governance (right?), I am talking about tyranny, form of government, which literally is rule by a single tyrant [6].
There is no such form of government as Tyranny by the Majority [1]. There is one named tyranny [6] and there is majority rule [2] usually seen in democracy. Tyranny by the Majority is a concept, a theory, a criticism of democracy and majority rule [3]. As a form of government it would be an oxymoron. How on earth could a single tyrant, the smallest minority possible, ever be the majority? I do understand the concept, but imo the term is poorly chosen. A better one would be "oppression by the majority" since that wouldn't be so ambiguous.
There's also no form of government called Tyranny by Oligarchy [1]. In fact, there's very little google can find about that. About the only search results are about "the replacement of tyranny by oligarchy" [4, 5]. And this term would also be an oxymoron.
Your statement "A monarchist system is tyranny by oligarchs (the nobles/lords)" is pure nonsense. A monarchy is ruled by a monarch [9] which can be, but not necessarily is, a tyrant. I should know, because where I'm from, is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy [10] and in fact one of the top ten democratic countries in the world [11], far from a tyranny.
To summarize: tyranny is rule by a single tyrant, oligarchy is rule by a few, democracy is rule by the people and monarchy is rule by a monarch.
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PS: If you were really as smart as you were implying, you would know about literal and figurative meanings and that I was talking about the literal meaning of the word. And yes, I'm implying something here.
human nature by default is exploitative. if human nature can exploit sociopathic/bullying tactics to get what they want without negative recourse they will. just like they will exploit co-operation to achieve a common goal. Considering bulling is alive and well in all aspects of human life (consider how common the worker who gets yelled at by their boss or customers / clients using aggression to achieve an end). it may be your learned behaviour to always approach the "co-operation" solution to a problem, is this because of society advancing or because of the threat of force if you attempt to utilize your own threat of force to get your own way. my point. those that have no retaliatory fear of threat of force turn someone like Mubarak & Saddam Husein and things like looting and mob mentality occurs. what makes you think that the people engaging in this activity are any different to your next door neighbor?
Actually, there are two default behaviors. There are only two cultures in the world.The culture of feast, and the culture of famine. Most cultures today are, like our own, the culture of famine. But look at certain cultures, such as some isolated rainforest tribes, and you will see something very different. One such culture is described in "The Continuum Concept," a book by a cultural anthropologist who spent quite some time with them. Many others are listed in a book based on a very large cultural survey of over two thousand cultures, "Saharasia," which sets out a theory on the origins of human violence.
Basically, we spent most of our time on earth, back when we were hunter gatherers, in the culture of feast. When times got tight, we might descend into the culture of famine for a little while, leading to low level "warfare" which is more like an extreme sport where the worst a loser might expect was disfigurement and severely reduced mating prospects. But being hunter gatherers, we simply moved along when times got tight. Then we discovered agriculture and animal husbandry, developed a surplus, and settled down. We couldn't really move when the first big climate change hit the northern Sahara, around 4,500 BC.
Before that, you see no swords or other weapons designed primarily to kill other humans, You see no city walls, and very few mass graves. You see no real evidence of famine culture. You see, all famine cultures are the same: they have rigid sex roles, they practice ritualized child abuse, usually involving some kind of genital mutilation like circumcision, they have a rigid hierarchy, and they are violent, imposing their culture by force and oppression. Feast cultures do not oppress, they have no taboos whatsoever. Not even against incest, though incest happens less in feast cultures than in famine.
Anyway, the Sahara dried up. It used to be fertile grassland. The cultures living there faced a famine the likes of which mobile hunter gatherers could never have imagined. Although they were using it up quickly, they still had a surplus, and the social organization to wage real war for the first time. But real war does something to people, it's called PTSD. So you had a whole generation of severely PTSD parents raising a generation of brain damaged children Starvation inhibits myelin formation. And that was enough to "lock in" the culture of famine, which then spread across the world through violence and oppression.
We are naturally capable of being selfish, self oriented, violent and hierarchical like our relatives the chimpanzees. But we are also capable of being selfless, loving, cooperative and non-violent, like our relatives who live in a more productive environment, the bonobos. Personally, given that the bonobos have really kinky sex nearly all day long, I think we might want to work on getting back to feast culture. There is a LOT more sex in feast cultures.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Democracy was not involved in the death of Socrates; any more than a lynch mob in the 1890's USA south was democratic or seeking justice.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Thanks, very well said.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
When we are unwilling to seek, at risk of our lives, and demand justice and equality for all "We The People" cease to be a democracy. Those Citizens that are always willing to defend the minority/weak are democratic Citizens. All other citizens are evil mental and emotional cripples [AKA: fools].
Poetic: A democratic Citizen is always a Knight of the Woe-Folks Continent.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
You're a flaming idiot, as was Hitler, Stalin, Chaney/Bush, Caesar, Napoleon.... Also, your rationality is as questionable. Please, seek help or incarceration soon. %~P
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I guess another flaming idiot on the topic of democracy.
Rule by majority is never a democracy. Rule by majority is mob rule (Nazi, Communist...) not any form of civilized democratic government.
Rule by majority is mob rule is lynching of innocents not democracy.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Thanks Much, I think there is no way to reason with evil idiots and citizens of Megalomania.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?