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Tim O'Reilly Steps In To Debate Open Government and Linux
PatrickRIot writes "Aeon Magazine ran a longform critique of Open Source politics last week titled 'Open Sesame: "Openness" is the new magic word in politics – but should governments really be run like Wikipedia?' It referenced Tim O'Reilly and the man himself has stepped in at the bottom of the page for a detailed and lengthy rejoinder. 'I'm a bit surprised to learn that my ideas of "government as a platform" are descended from Eric Raymond's ideas about Linux, since: a) Eric is a noted libertarian with disdain for government b) Eric's focus on Linux was on its software development methodology. From the start, I was the open source activist focused on the power of platforms, arguing the role for the architecture of Unix and the Internet in powering the open source movement. ... One thing that distresses me about this discussion is the notion that somehow, if open government doesn't solve every problem, or creates new problems as it solves others, it is a failed movement. The world doesn't go forward in a straight line! The "open" democracy experiment of 1776 is still ongoing; we're trying to figure out how to use technology to adapt it to the 21st century and a country with a hundredfold greater population.'"
Way too easily used to justify doing nothing, or even just to oppose doing anything different than what's already done.
It's probably one of the more pernicious attitudes to be found, but ultimately it's an empty cause.
We simply recognize that government by necessity must be limited. Think of government like a fire. I use fire to heat my house. By carefully controlling the fire and keeping it in a furnace, I reap the benefits (warmth) without suffering the ill effects (being burned or having property destroyed). If I didn't control that fire, my house would be destroyed. That doesn't mean I have disdain for fire or I hate fire, I just recognize that it must be controlled to be useful.
Government is exactly the same.
Do you have ESP?
That's the brilliance of the Founders in finding a way to overcome the problems endemic to the Roman Republic to ensure that a republic can (and will) survive the predations of corruption.
I'm kind of confused as to what brilliance that is, exactly. It's only been a little over two centuries and we've already got:
Of course, we don't have the sanguine entertainment of the sands, but the US is batshit about sports, and the Romans didn't have the options of Hollywood and Call of Duty to provide a virtual equivalent to bloodshed.
We really haven't solved any of the problems the Roman Republican had, except for keeping people fed. It'd be harder for a Caesar to rise up and drive a whole stinking mass of politicians out of D.C., but I'd argue the Founding Fathers pointedly did not solve that issue - they were absolutely against the idea of a standing army directly loyal to the Republic.
At any rate, it's still a damned better system than direct democracy, absolutely. Democracy sound great, and probably is great - until you find your behavior isn't liked by a simple majority.
Nonsense. Read up on what a republic is, what a democracy is, the Federalist Papers (and read all of them, not just the 2 lines your favorite site fed you) and something about the context of when the constitution was written.
The US is a constitutional republic. Congratulations, so is France, Germany, China, Russia, the ex-USSR, Egypt, and a whole host of others. There is nothing more common than a constitutional republic in the world of national governments. What is also true is that the US is a representative democracy, a smaller subset of the super set of republics. This can be distinguished from direct democracies (which are also republics, and can be constitutional), or binding representation, (which are also republics).
Again, there is absolutely NOTHING special about the US being a republic.
The Founders explicitly shied away from establishing a democracy for the simple reason that democracies do not scale beyond a small collection of city states.
And if you'd read the Federalist Papers instead of just parroting someone else, they are EXPRESSLY referring to a direct democracy not scaling. After the initial definition, they just refer to democracies, while implying "direct democracies".
Open government? Democracy? That's a recipe for totalitarianism -- because only the strongest consensus builder can assert control to get anything done and few, if any, checks and balances can be imposed or enforced.
Congratulations. You discovered the principal flaw of democracy. You're only about 300 years late to the party. Voltaire has a nice discussion around what makes a ruler legitimate. You might want to look into it. Once you do, you'll also realize that the US was subject to the same risk from the day it became a nation, because it operates on exactly the principles you decry: openness in operation, democratic election of legislators and executives, and a requirement for consensus-building to operate.
Yes, it's just semantics. But it bothers me because the trend seems to be define things in such a way until only a very small and very vocal minority is allowed to participate in government. Of course, they do it because they are the only ones who truly understand how the founding fathers wanted to run things, and they are the only ones who can save the nation. Now where have I heard that before....
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
...But this is about a some high-profile person (activist if you like) being wrongly pigeon-holed by a space-filler for the purposes of winding up the libertarians, open-sourcers etc. etc.
Basically T O'R has confronted a troll. [Well done that man. Always stand up for what you believe in.]
The government is an irrational belief that exists in the minds of the overwhelming (but slowly shrinking) majority of people. This belief is that some class of priests, through some ritualistic exceptionalism, has a special right to get away with violence.
No, your reasoning is inverted. A better approach to understand this stuff is through motivations.
A sizable chunk of humanity has as its driving goal "having power". They will struggle to obtain power by any means available, that isn't something they chose to be, it's just what they are. And if you don't provide them the mechanisms to do this in a least damaging way, which is what a stable government with concrete prospects of power shifts by non-violent means is, you'll quickly find them doing it on their own in very damaging ways.
People with different driving goals are usually unable to understand how strong this one is, and as is typical for human beings try to reinterpret it in terms of their own different goals, thus reaching confusing and invalid conclusions. Libertarianism is a prime example. It is mostly composed of people with the goals of intellectual achievement and entrepreneurship and who are unable to understand either power thirst or, for that matter, stability seeking, which is what "workers" want above anything else. No surprise then they get to develop a well crafted utopic dream which can work provided those two cases aren't around, the only minor problem with it being that reality gets in the way by continuing to producing those two cases every single generation, no end in sight.
What Libertarianism lacks is balance. They have an excellent theory on how to create material wealth and should be commended for this. What they don't understand, and this is what clouds their mind, is that for the majority out there "material wealth" is of secondary importance, if not something they see as the "necessary evil" they must keep enduring despite their own best interests.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
- Some form of slavery; to our credit, we did get rid of outright slavery, but migrant workers are far more politically correct, hey?
Even better: the real slaves and/or low income jobs now don't even live in our Western countries anymore. Much cheaper to ship products in bulk or in containers to us, and leave the people in far away countries where different rules apply. Whatever way you twist that, the reality is still that there are different sets of rules for different groups of people. And the poorest work for the richest. If it is not exactly the same as slavery, then at least it's pretty damned close to it.