Right; there are many advantages to writing things down formally. The problems we experience with the legislative process today doesn't have to be a problem with legislation itself, only with the political system.
You can check out a typical wiki here. There is no codified editorial process.
What anarchy classically means depends on the era. AFAICT, the term originated in ancient Greece, as a derogatory term for the form of democracy used at one period. ("They have no king! Anarchists!")
Then the term wasn't used until socialists of France and Russia in the eighteenth and seventeenth century picked it up, to use it to describe their non-hierarchical ideals. (Proudhon, Kropotkin.)
The ideals were put into practice for a brief period of time during the Spanish civil war in the 1930s.
Any formal organization or rules was strictly contrary to anarchy.
(NB: I didn't come up with the dumb "+1 insightful" thing in this thread. that was some other poster.)
The original poster said people on slashdot are anarchists. Not exactly.
Right,/. is not anarchist at all. Something like a wiki is more similar to "lawless" anarchy.
There you have it! The world is in a perfectly functioning anarchy!
The issues of codified laws and conflict resolution are as hard to solve in an anarchy as in any other society. I try hard (I guess I likewise fail it?) to explain that most of the most obvious "drawbacks of anarchy" that people think of when they hear the word "anarchy" are in effect in our world today, and that the anarchic world would be very little different in that regard.
However, where anarchy is really interesting is in the issue of hierarchy, and in that sense the world is very far from anarchy today.
Mention anarchy and people almost always will reply with some comment on lawlessness, bringing the focus of the discussion away from social hierarchies.
Face it, Bill Gates has, in some senses, more "power" than a landless farmer in Brazil, even though he in some senses contributes less to the wealth of the world. That's hierarchy. Solve these problems, and we have a sweet, fair, anarchy.
It's not all about chaos and lawlessness. Organization may be "the work of the devil" but it's something that many classic anarchists preach and practice, in as decentralized and non-hierarchical forms as possible.
Oh, I see your mistake. You think selfishness is antithetical to "goodness".
No. I think selfishness is orthogonal to "goodness". Many selfish acts are antithetical to "goodness", even though there are some selfish acts that have "good" results.
I wrote that the problem was not (only) that capitalism rewards selfishness, it was that it punish "goodness".
Others that he was actually making a point that whether you consider property theft or not depends on what property and how you acquire it and other constraints on the concept.
"Others"? Everything's right there in the essay itself.
Inheritance is key to one of the biggest problems with land ownership.
As a thought experiment, most people wouldn't mind a colony of settlers dividing up land among themselves, working on it and cultivating it.
What a lot of us do mind is what arises several generations later.
Through marriages, inheritance and business deals, the land patches have consolidated and are owned by a few powerful owners. Peasants have next to no choice but to go work on the land that someone else "owns", and recieve but a portion of what they've worked for.
We live in a hierarchical society, where owners (of e.g. land) have significant power over those who haven't - and it's been that way since (and before) feudalist times.
But unlike a rigid meritocracy, we'll always have the "right to fork", so to speak.
E.g. no one can force the ftp-masters to distribute a version of Debian that they don't like; on the other hand can no one force debian to stick with those same ftp-masters for ever and ever.
The practice of circled A:s was reintroduced in the late seventies by the punk collective Crass, who weren't capitalist at all (and who had a pretty good knowledge of Proudhon and Kropotkin).
I thought this was from the novel Shoeless Joe, film as Field of Dreams in the eighties.
Re:Yeah, but I'd still toss it, Maya uses 3 button
on
Apple Delays New iMac
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· Score: 1
You're quite possibly right, but optical mice generally have been more expensive than the optomechanical ones we had when I when I was a teen, those annoying ones with a ball that wore out after a while. That's part of what I meant.
I don't think that the number of buttons would affect the price by very much.
You're talking about standard as in "standard windows".
I'm talking about standard as in "the environment everyone should adhere to".
Maybe I was using the language wrong, then.
(BTW, I was surprised that I was moderated troll - I wasn't intentionally trolling for flames, just trying to point out the difference between teaching windows and teaching base-10 math.)
Re:Yeah, but I'd still toss it, Maya uses 3 button
on
Apple Delays New iMac
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· Score: 1
Much of what you write makes sense (I like a one-button mouse, myself) except for one thing: the apple optical mice aren't exactly cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
Right; there are many advantages to writing things down formally. The problems we experience with the legislative process today doesn't have to be a problem with legislation itself, only with the political system.
What anarchy classically means depends on the era. AFAICT, the term originated in ancient Greece, as a derogatory term for the form of democracy used at one period. ("They have no king! Anarchists!")
Then the term wasn't used until socialists of France and Russia in the eighteenth and seventeenth century picked it up, to use it to describe their non-hierarchical ideals. (Proudhon, Kropotkin.)
The ideals were put into practice for a brief period of time during the Spanish civil war in the 1930s.
No; voluntary organization isn't contrary. Hierarchies are.
Right,
The issues of codified laws and conflict resolution are as hard to solve in an anarchy as in any other society. I try hard (I guess I likewise fail it?) to explain that most of the most obvious "drawbacks of anarchy" that people think of when they hear the word "anarchy" are in effect in our world today, and that the anarchic world would be very little different in that regard.
However, where anarchy is really interesting is in the issue of hierarchy, and in that sense the world is very far from anarchy today.
Mention anarchy and people almost always will reply with some comment on lawlessness, bringing the focus of the discussion away from social hierarchies.
Face it, Bill Gates has, in some senses, more "power" than a landless farmer in Brazil, even though he in some senses contributes less to the wealth of the world. That's hierarchy. Solve these problems, and we have a sweet, fair, anarchy.
It's not all about chaos and lawlessness. Organization may be "the work of the devil" but it's something that many classic anarchists preach and practice, in as decentralized and non-hierarchical forms as possible.
No.
I think selfishness is orthogonal to "goodness". Many selfish acts are antithetical to "goodness", even though there are some selfish acts that have "good" results.
I wrote that the problem was not (only) that capitalism rewards selfishness, it was that it punish "goodness".
Fine, as long as they don't create problems for others.
How does a formal code change this? The scenario you describe above happen all the time in our current society.
And last I looked, abusing laws for unethical purposes wasn't mandatory.
Which won't put food on that plebeian's table. In the short run.
Social change is possible, sure, but telling ourselves that we already live in some anarchist utopia is counter-productive if you have that as a goal.
"Others"? Everything's right there in the essay itself.
Inheritance is key to one of the biggest problems with land ownership.
As a thought experiment, most people wouldn't mind a colony of settlers dividing up land among themselves, working on it and cultivating it.
What a lot of us do mind is what arises several generations later.
Through marriages, inheritance and business deals, the land patches have consolidated and are owned by a few powerful owners. Peasants have next to no choice but to go work on the land that someone else "owns", and recieve but a portion of what they've worked for.
That's not good, hackers, that's not good.
The problem not only that capitalism rewards selfishness - it's that it almost punishes "goodness".
Whether or not humanity is wholly selfish at heart should be observed in a society that rewards goodness, not trample it.
(My main problem with capitalism is the hierarchical power structures.)
Rules created by and for a favoured elite (such as the DMCA) are counter-productive and unfair.
And, I posit, fair rules don't need to be formally codified, just informed about.
We live in a hierarchical society, where owners (of e.g. land) have significant power over those who haven't - and it's been that way since (and before) feudalist times.
But unlike a rigid meritocracy, we'll always have the "right to fork", so to speak.
E.g. no one can force the ftp-masters to distribute a version of Debian that they don't like; on the other hand can no one force debian to stick with those same ftp-masters for ever and ever.
The practice of circled A:s was reintroduced in the late seventies by the punk collective Crass, who weren't capitalist at all (and who had a pretty good knowledge of Proudhon and Kropotkin).
That's a myth. The dvorak layout is excellent.
As other posters have noticed, though, the primary gains are ergonomical rather than in speed.
But does it play Ogg Vorbis?
Neither Mozilla nor OOo are part of Gnome; much less the core of Gnome.
Hope this isn't redundant, but what about Gnome's Dashboard?
It had the name first.
2^28 times smaller.
I thought this was from the novel Shoeless Joe, film as Field of Dreams in the eighties.
You're quite possibly right, but optical mice generally have been more expensive than the optomechanical ones we had when I when I was a teen, those annoying ones with a ball that wore out after a while. That's part of what I meant.
I don't think that the number of buttons would affect the price by very much.
You're talking about standard as in "standard windows".
I'm talking about standard as in "the environment everyone should adhere to".
Maybe I was using the language wrong, then.
(BTW, I was surprised that I was moderated troll - I wasn't intentionally trolling for flames, just trying to point out the difference between teaching windows and teaching base-10 math.)
Much of what you write makes sense (I like a one-button mouse, myself) except for one thing: the apple optical mice aren't exactly cheap.
Windows isn't standard and never will be as long as it isn't free. (Same goes for Macintosh, by the way.)
It's a political argument.