When Libertarians Attack Free Software 944
binarybits writes 'I've got a new article analyzing the unfortunate tendency of libertarian and free-market organizations to attack free software. The latest example is a policy analyst at the Heartland Institute who attacks network neutrality regulations by arguing that advocates have 'unwittingly bought into' the 'radical agenda' of the free software movement. I argue that in reality, the free market and free software are entirely compatible, and libertarians are shooting themselves in the foot by antagonizing the free software movement.'
"Heartland Institute"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Where did you get the idea that these guys are libertatians?
who's freedom? (Score:4, Insightful)
Liberarians tend to focus on "my freedom" more than on "your freedom".
Not a universal libertarian belief (Score:3, Insightful)
I consider myself a libertarian and I'm a fan of FOSS simply because of the liberty and control it gives me over my computer and the software I use.
My opinion has nothing to do with the free market, but if anything, FOSS lowers the barrier of entry into the software market incredibly, allowing anyone with a computer with the opportunity to participate in the market.
Libertarians calling others a 'radical agenda'? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all Libertarians are Free Market (Score:4, Insightful)
That particular variety of Libertarian is more what people in the US think of, but they tend to really be more like republicans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism [wikipedia.org]
Sort of like not all democrats want abortions and the destruction of the military, not all republicans want freedom and religious facism, and not all greens walk to work :)
Not all libertarians are facists, or communists, or free-market/anti-market - take your pick.
Most just want maximal individual freedoms with minimal government.
I'd say the F/OSS market is the BEST expression of Libertarian though, especially the Limited BSD/MIT style licenses. The GPL, well, that's another debate ;)
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
This is actually a pretty accurate post when considered from the point of view of capitalism's proponents. They bypass the moral discussion (with respect to individual freedom, personal autonomy, mutual voluntary association, etc) and go straight for the purely utilitarian side-effects (the efficiency of the market with respect to the quality of goods and prices). It seems as though they have conceded the battle where it should have been won, and so whenever perceived downsides to the free market arise (i.e. places where the free markets do not produce a good that collectively is felt as "necessary"), it becomes merely a matter of utilitarian convenience to abandon those principles for a more collectivist approach.
Another effect is that things like free software, communes, etc. are often considered socialistic or communistic in nature when they exist only as a result of mutual voluntary consent, the epitome of free market capitalism.
Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
The GPL requires copyright to be enforced. You can't place terms (such as releasing the source code) on distribution if distribution is already completely legal. Copyright is a government interference in the market, using force to set up temporary monopolies. If I understand libertarianism, that's a bad thing. So under the libertarian ideal, there would be no copyright, and so no GNU software.
Libertarian that likes free software (Score:5, Insightful)
It serves my own purposes. As a developer I am not interested in licensing and IP. That kind of crap is for big corporations. My interests lie in being a paid expert where I go from one company to another and get paid to integrate or fix their free software based products. For small indepedent businesspeople, free software is a major asset. We can share the non-competitive aspects of the software. Operating systems, webservers, etc are all commodities. The important bits are where they are configured and customized for a businesses' needs, rather than licensing the software itself.
Free software isn't socialism, it's the new capitalism. It's the small guy capitalism.
Please Read My Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Libertarians calling others a 'radical agenda'? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wrote this here years ago, but it bears repeating: Libertarianism is the carrying out of fascism by other means. The one thing it precisely does not guarantee is liberty.
Ah, but those ten seconds of pure unadulterated anarcho-capitalism, before someone with power and money realizes that no rules means they get to make the rules, would be fucking sweet. =)
Re:"Heartland Institute"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all self-described libertarians agree or use the same arguments on every subject.
The Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell [lewrockwell.com] style libertarians oppose net neutrality because they oppose the government regulating the internet in any fashion. They view it as a slippery slope which will lead to many draconian regulations and eventual loss of many freedoms now enjoyed.
The Cato Institute, which is considered a libertarian think tank is often made fun of by the LRC and Paul supporters, usually for good reasons.
Libertarianism, like most isms have a large umbrella to hide under.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:4, Insightful)
Do not confuse capitalism with the free market.
The "most prized product" -- the goal -- of capitalism is greater wealth for the aristocrats who control the capital.
The free market doesn't have a goal; the whole idea is that it's a decentralized system of actors each pursuing their own goals. Under certain circumstances -- when buyers and sellers meet with equal power, full knowledge, and no externalization of costs -- it can produce reduced costs and better goods and services for the consumer.
Be forced to be free? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd just like to point out... (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking as a registered libertarian, not everything in a capitalist system is done for profit (just ask the NRA or the EFF). And sometimes even innovation is done for innovation's sake.
Of course, that software is inherently "information" is what makes this work (avoiding the economic problem of scarcity). "Knowledge" doesn't cost anything to pass on. I think where those right(er) wing libertarians get their signals crossed. They assume that because we currently have an idea of "Intellectual Property" that it is in some way a fundamental freedom. Or that because we currently have corporations that can exist as entities they fundamentally are. These are just assumptions built into our system, not facts. I don't remember reading anything in Locke about intelectual property rights. And I don't see how giving software away for free is anti-capitalist.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:4, Insightful)
Your formula is missing a term.
The formula should be: [(customer's actual value received) + (customer's bad information value)] / [(price paid by customer) + (other transaction costs)]
For the numerator addition: I could value something at $1000, but if it only really benefits me $500, that's important in terms of systemic effects. This is where marketing, branding, incomplete information, TCO, FUD, etc all come into play.
For the denominator, this is the one that helps your point. The other transaction costs prevent your ratio from ever being undefined, so you can go ahead and remove that clause from your analysis.
An old Ronald Reagan quote is still true... (Score:5, Insightful)
"An economist is someone who sees something that works in practice and wonders if it would work in theory."
I like libertarian philiosophy myself, but the nuts in the crowd can't understand that markets/politics is a synthesis of human psychology and behaviors perturbed by random events, and doesn't have some underlying grand unified theory like physics. Real life has, and always will be, a muddle.
Re:who's freedom? (Score:3, Insightful)
Libertarian Establishment (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with FOSS in their eyes is that it prevents the proprietary software companies from making as much money as they want.
They don't want a "free market" in the classical sense. To them "free market" means "free to be anti-competitive and free from government safety/environmental regulations."
They only care about making money for themselves, and to hell with everyone else.
A true free-market economy is as much of a pipe dream as a true Communist one. Greed and lust for power corrupt both of these ideologies before they ever get fully established.
I'll grant that many rank-and-file Libertarians do not think this way, but the most vocal part of the Libertarian movement sure seems to.
Not terribly surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who is against the activities of a group of volunteers, doing as they wish with the fruits of their labor, and offering goods under their chosen terms(Yes Virginia, the GPL is simply a voluntary private contract, not some conspiracy to oppress you) just because there isn't enough money and market-rhetoric involved is a damn shoddy libertarian. Of course, anyone who argues against the environmental regulations that prevent people from unilaterally poisoning my person and property is also a damn shoddy libertarian, and we have masses of those.
While certain flavors of market capitalism(and potentially even limited liability corporations) can be libertarian arrangements, anybody who mistakes supporting those for being a libertarian is, as they say, Doin' it Wrong.
Net neutrality is NOT FOSS! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not all Libertarians are Free Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright is not property, and it is not a right. So no, libertarians are not pro-restrictive copyright.
Re:"Heartland Institute"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The self-described libertarians who oppose free software and other radically egalitarian concepts aren't really libertarians in the sense of Ron Paul or the Libertarian Party. They're Capitalists or Plutocratics who simply want to be free of external restrictions on their ability to make money. But in our society's not-terribly-nuanced way of speaking about politics, anybody who is opposed to the State but isn't trying to replace it with the Church, gets labeled "libertarian".
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:1, Insightful)
Any true... (Score:4, Insightful)
Any libertarian who is against government intervention should be against copyright, and even though RMS might be against a state in which there is no or a very weak copyright, it is a plus for both free software and consumers.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Exploitation is the most prized product (Score:4, Insightful)
This just shows the utter hypocrisy of the libertarians. I've said all along that libertarians really want corporate feudalism, or at least they have been completely co-opted by corporate feudalists. Libertarians, in general, feel they are superior to everyone else. They also feel that it is a natural right for the elite to profit from the plebeians. When anything threatens their real agenda, they will set aside their supposed ideals to destroy it. Free software reduces the ability of the elite to profit off of the 'inferior people' of the world, and therefore it must be destroyed. Unions, even though they are a product of free association, also threaten libertarians ability to exploit others, and so you will never find a libertarian who is pro union, even though, according to their ideals, they should be.
The thing is, Libertarians always have such high levels of cognitive dissonance, they do not realize this is what they are doing. They firmly believe they are 'good' people, because being a 'good' person goes along with their image of themselves as vastly superior beings, so they will never look at all the ways their ideals and actions work to oppress the less fortunate. In their minds, they are helping the less fortunate by exploiting them.
Simple test (Score:5, Insightful)
A simple test that I ask big-L Libertarians to engage in before I will discuss anything political with them on the internet:
Explain, in your own words, how the internet as it is presently could possibly have come to exist under a Libertarian political structure. In order to be taken seriously, Be sure to account for how we would have moved beyond the walled-garden networks of the late 80's early 90's, cite ARPAnet, and reference current backbone peering economics, including the recent maneuvering by Google which prompted the whole network neutrality debate in the first place.
Nobody's passed it yet.
John Galt complex (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, a lot of them focus on the freedoms of their imaginary future selves and on the vast fortunes they are surely going to amass. See Joe the Plumber. So they end up defending big corporations and rich people, even if those pollute and exploit. The free market rhetoric is just a facade to sound somewhat reasonable.
Libertarianism itself has valuable insights and should be taken seriously. It is spoiled by those who read Ayn Rand as teenagers and took up a professional career in corporate sponsored think tank libertarianism.
Par for the course (Score:3, Insightful)
old customs die hard (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
I posit that one of the most prized products of Capitalism and the free market is to reduce the cost for the end consumer and raise the quality of the products and services. Now, the scientific formula for deciding the positive effectiveness of this is: (customer's percieved value)/(actual retail cost)
Isn't that kind of stuff a little hard to measure scientifically when the customer's perceived value is relatively arbitrary and irrational [slashdot.org]? The same customer can perceive the same item at wildly different values depending on context.
Quite a troll by Tim B. Lee (Score:3, Insightful)
If you look under the covers, every article quoted by the blog post presented talk about linux in terms of POLICY DECISIONS by GOVERNMENT ENTITIES.
When Munich went Linux, it made some open source folks realize that, if Linux had a hard road getting adoption by the likes of Dell and HP, then they could go the Apple route and be a government mandate (think schools)
And so people began lobbying to get laws passed mandating the use of open-source tools by various government bodies.
For example, in one of the articles (Open Source Socialism by Sonia Arrison) Lee quotes:
This is the primary concern of the libertarians - that choice is not mandated by legislative fiat. We should let the experts employed by the states decide what they'll run.
I expect most folks reading Slashdot would feel the same way, in their own job.
Re:"Heartland Institute"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree with the anti-net neutrality people if the network had been built without resorting to eminent domain and artificial monolopies.
You can't ask for special government favors to get your infrastructure built and then all of a sudden "come to libertarian Jesus" and demand to be free of government regulation.
Re:Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
whenever an RIAA story comes out, that the artists (read: Labels) have a right to their property, both real and intellectual
Again, you're presupposing that "intellectual property" is actually property. A true libertarian would acknowledge that this isn't the case, as intellectual property is purely a government contrivance. ie, without the government, the idea of IP simply doesn't work in practice, as you need the government to enforce artificial scarcity in order for that "property" to be of any true value.
Re:who's freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please Read My Blog (Score:3, Insightful)
If the article's good, it's good. If it's not, it's not... doesn't matter to me where it's published, or who tells me about it (even if it's the person who wrote it.)
The real problem is that Slashdot rubber-stamps terrible articles all the time. If they only linked to really good articles on blogs, I doubt anybody would mind.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:4, Insightful)
Do not confuse capitalism with the free market.
I concur. After all Thomas Jefferson wrote many scathing letters against corporations and even proposed that laws be used to limit them.
After all... Corporations like the British East India Company were the ones that caused the revolutionaries to rise up in the first place.
Re:who's freedom? (Score:1, Insightful)
That's because most libertarians are selfish bastards at heart. They are not concerned with such collectivist notions as creating a sustainable free society.
No. Libertarians believe that if the people really want to create a sustainable free society it can be done without the government stepping in to do it. Give the society to the people to do whatever they want with it. Don't give it to the government to let them do whatever they claim to be the will of the people.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot have a free market once economic power starts to accumulate, as it will in the absence of regulation; nor you have a free market with regulation.
The "free market", thusly, cannot really exist, except for a very brief period at the beginning before clout accumulates and capitalism takes hold. It's a philosophical fiction; a Utopia by definition. Marxism is more realistic.
Re:who's freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one of the most misleading, ungrammatical, and silly sentences I've ever read. There is no direct association between freedom and responsibility, any more than between slavery and responsibility, freedom and irresponsibilty, etc.. Freedom allows a person to follow his best interests, and to use the word "greed" for that is to use a loaded term that not libertarians, but the opponents of libertarians, would use.
Although the world includes masochists, for sane people the idea that the purpose of freedom is to give you more opportunities to hurt yourself is wrong. The purpose of freedom is to give individuals the opportunity to better themselves, and to say "Libertarians association freedom with greed" is to attempt to slur both libertarians and freedom.
Re:An old Ronald Reagan quote is still true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting.. A quote about economists from a guy who didn't know dick about the economy. Implicitly equating economists with libertarians. And then implying that physics isn't real life. Very curious.
Re:who's freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Exploitation is the most prized product (Score:5, Insightful)
My feeling is that after the disaster that was the Bush Administration the brand name of " Libertarianism" came into vogue... so there are a lot of folks running around calling themselves Libertarians when they actually are not.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, one can't place any of the blame for our current society, where one of the biggest problems facing the lower class is an overabundance of cheap food, complex electrical equipment made from components brought from all corners of the earth is available for a few minute's work, and loudmouths who are not of the aristocracy have enough economic stability to sit on their butts and debate these things, on capitalism and free markets at all. Surely all of these innovations occur daily in those socialist utopias the world has produced year in and year out.
Corporations may exist for profit, but their ability to extract profit from the underclass is the only reason that technology is available to you and me, and not just some hobbyhorse for the rich.
Re:Exploitation is the most prized product (Score:2, Insightful)
Very true. Their basic premise seem to be that making money (anybody making money) enhances the personal freedom of everyone - and they are very dogmatic about it. Whenever there is a conflict between money-making and individual freedom (which they claim is something that shouldn't happen) they go into full cognitive dissonance mode. They blame the government - reasoning in a circular kind of way that because the government did something around the same time as the subject at hand and because government is bad and markets are wonderful, government must be to blame.
And in the end, their proposed solution for any conflict between money making and freedom will always will come down on the site of money making.
Re:Exploitation is the most prized product (Score:4, Insightful)
You're completely out of sync with what most libertarians believe. Many libertarians would abolish corporations completely, as the government does not have the power to grant any "rights" to a non person entity. Given that a libertarian would likely take the argument that far, the idea that they *want* corporate feudalism is just absurd on its face. Please stop espousing ideas that are so far from the truth.
Re:Simple test (Score:1, Insightful)
Must be lonely in your little world where someone has to give a 20 minute dissertation on a topic AND it has to match your biased world view before you will consider them worthy of discourse (where, of course, they would merely nod emphatically as you share your substantial -- and correct -- opinions on every subject on Slashdot).
From my perspective, the internet's growth has been an exemplary example of what minimal interference from government can achieve. The internet has been, for the most part, market driven. When standards were/are needed, players in the industry meet and agree (or not) on how they will interact without government intervention. When some Rupert Murdoch makes a walled garden, an RMS steps up to make a free/libre version. The internet-market regulates itself.
Re:"Heartland Institute"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:2, Insightful)
Telling.
Many anti-Capitalists would, if they had their way, remove THE CHOICE of capitalism and free-market, thus obviating the messy moral issues.
Of course, it is that removal of CHOICE that is the greatest moral threat.
Can you imagine what would happen if other markets went the way of OSS and FSF ideals? You'd get a few finished products and a lot of half-baked, half-finished products. You'll have to supply your own containers when shopping for soup at the market, and provide your botulism test because the kitchen hadn't gotten around to it yet. You go to buy a car, but someone decided to break with convention and try a new brake design. He's delivered the car in a .5 Alpha and makes a small note that the brake fluid/master cylinder/wheel interface isn't ready yet.
I prefer capitalism, even the messed up version we have here in the U.S. to what most anti-capitalists have in mind. At least it lets me choose my morals.
Re:Exploitation is the most prized product (Score:1, Insightful)
You are wrong.
"Libertarians, in general, feel they are superior to everyone else."
I don't feel superior to everyone else.
"you will never find a libertarian who is pro union"
I support the existence of labor unions.
I am a libertarian. I am a software engineer who supports and uses free software.
While you may think these are the attributes and goals of Libertarians, this is not the stated purpose of libertarian ideology. The fact that you can find SOME ignorant libertarians that are selfish and inconsistent is not surprising nor relevant. In fact I would argue that people who claim to be libertarians and do not uphold its ideals are not true libertarians.
It is quite clear your view of libertarianism is very limited.
Re:Exploitation is the most prized product (Score:5, Insightful)
nd so you will never find a libertarian who is pro union, even though, according to their ideals, they should be.
I am a registered Libertarian, and am very pro Union. I am not a fan of "union shops" where just to get employment, you are forced to be in a union. For me, that is a little to close to "you have to be $Religion to work here". I am a firm believer that people can choose to join, or choose not to (and choose to leave) if they wish.
I'm also very much against anything done at the federal level, and handing things like Medicare and such to the states (including healthcare reform.) But yes, I do believe in universal healthcare, but it should be an option, and done by the states, (or groups of states, if they decide to band together).
Many, many people don't toe their parties lines.. Dear god, look at the log cabin republicans. Gay people in the republican party!
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:4, Insightful)
However, please remember that a completely unfettered free market tends irremediably to end up in an oligarchy
can we define libertarian? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's telling that the first line of the Wiki [wikipedia.org] is "Libertarianism is a term adopted by a broad spectrum of political philosophies". The first line of the second paragraph is "All forms of libertarianism support strong personal rights to life and liberty, but do not agree on the subject of property".
So how can we have a discussion which is fundamentally about questioning the libertarian stance on property when there isn't one?
To me libertarianism derives from liberty and hence the fundamental rule is everybody should be free to do as they please, provided that does not encroach on the equal rights of others, at which point a fair and just balance must be struck. (If you "get it" you'll realise everything past the first comma is redundant.) For what it's worth I certainly do not agree with the elimination of the state because a) the state (or at least judiciary) is necessary to arbitrate and enforce "a fair and just balance" b) there are major practical considerations such as markets not being perfect.
To relate to the OP, I have a suspicion my take fundamentally agrees to that of the author but the article loses itself in the detail while fundamentally the debate is about principle. Talk of a "bottom-up, participatory structure" and so on is not relevant. The question is, does free software impinge on the rights of others? My answer is of course not. It may be difficult for paid-software to compete, but nobody has a right to do well in the market place, they only have the right to try.
Re:These are not libertarians (Score:5, Insightful)
Try as you might, you'll never separate libertarianism from racism.
Even if a libertarian isn't personally racist, they see things like the civil rights act and the fair housing act (and the associated enforcement costs) as the government sticking it's nose where it doesn't belong, so at the very least a libertarian world view enables racism.
Libertarianism is a joke (Score:1, Insightful)
Big L Libertarians are mostly just a bunch of conservative Republican douchebags who jumped ship when their party was taken over and basically destroyed from within by Neocon wingnuts.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure if your post could be any farther from the truth. People pay $400 because they're dumb enough to think that it's worth it. It's the same reason that they stuck with the pre-installed Vista instead of installing something else - because they chose not to. This has nothing to do with capitalism. People will lie, cheat, and steal in any system. The only thing is, when it happens in socialism / communism, people like you say "that person didn't follow the rules". When it happens in capitalism, you lie and claim that it's capitalisms fault that some people lie / cheat / steal.
Capitalism is the only socio-economic policy that allows freedom and gives people a chance to improve their lives dramatically. Just because some people are scum or stupid doesn't make the system flawed. There are stupid assholes in every group of people (just look at the people who are fanboys of any product / company). By your logic, since there are griefers in WoW, WoW is evil. Hold people accountable for their actions - don't blame the system when someone cheats.
I would write more, but I'm doing this on my iPhone and it takes too long to type.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny how most of the time, an unregulated market increases the cost of items taht should be dirt-cheap, until they're an unaffordable luxury to most people.
This is demonstrably ludicrous. A free market necessarily pushes the prices of abundant items lower and lower through competition. One example, check the price of hard drive storage now. Compare it through the years.
And how the quality of the products and services doesn't matter, so long as you can dupe or force people into buying it.
Well, it's a free market. If you're stupid enough to be duped, yeah that'll happen. It also provides you the opportunity for a smart shopper to get a great value.
In fact, non-free software (e.g., Windows and other Microsoft wares) is a great example of this. Is Office 7 worth $400? Nope, but because it's a free market, the price gets inflated to this point.
Just because YOU don't value an office suite at this price doesn't mean the price is inflated. People are buying it at this price at a level Microsoft is comfortable with. You also have the choice of several free office suites, and a cheaper office suite from Apple. So why do you care that office is expensive? Is it because you find that it really is better than the other office suites I mentioned? If so, perhaps this is why it's cost is higher?
If people stopped buying it at that price, Microsoft would lower the price.
Is Vista a good product? Nope, but because the industry is regulated only by those in control of it (i.e. Microsoft) hundreds of thousands of people were essentially forced to buy it anyway.
Forced to buy it? Ha. I bought Snow Leopard for $29. Many people bought Linux for $0.
Remember, the "free market" is not free. It is manipulated like a puppet by those who hold the reins, those who do not care about your wellbeing or options in life.
Ahh, really. So I must be mistaken when I see Google in control of search on the internet, having only been around a decade or so. They came out of nowhere with great technology, and through capitalism, were able to best giants at the time like Microsoft, Yahoo, AltaVista, et. al.
Apple was started out of a garage. HP was started out of a garage. YOU can start your own company today, and build it up to greatness, if you can execute well and have something people want. That is the power of capitalism.
Grow up.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
e.g. having a central bank that rewards its allies while looting the people,
This sounds like a jab against the Federal Reserve. The problem with the Fed is that it's privately owned and controlled. They have central banks in European countries too, but those banks are government-owned and controlled, and they don't seem to have all the problems the USA's Federal Reserve has.
Now, we could argue over whether a central bank is a good idea at all, but the USA didn't seem to do too hot without one before the Great Depression, so it seems like a necessary evil, but only when it's run by the government, which unlike any private institution is ultimately accountable to the people.
Re:who's freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
ending of the licensing of barbers, doctors, lawyers
Damn you government, making sure doctors aren't practicing medicine without knowing what they're doing! If I want to be able to offer people neurosurgery or transplant one person's head onto another person's ass in my unclean apartment, never having been to medical school, that should be my right!
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Exploitation is the most prized product (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never seen a political group where all or even a decisive majority of its members were reasonable people.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite evidence?
The free market is a simple consequence of individual freedom. Just as free speech is good and right, but there may need to be some regulation on edge cases, the free market is good and right, with regulation needed only on extremes. In both cases, the less regulation the better. Capitalism generally leads to a better standard of living than other economic system, but that's not why I support it; I support it because it's the only ethical economic system. The only economic system based on freedom and personal choice.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
No argument there.
It is not necessarily the case that the value function of the optimizer is exactly what we want. For instance, the free market doesn't care if disabled people die, but we do.
I disagree with this. The free market is a collection of individually acting humans, and optimizes for the values of those humans. If "WE" care about disabled people, so will the market. I suspect it's simply the case that "WE" as a collective do not care as much as "WE" the individual claim to. Although, there seems to be strong evidence that the more free the economy, the greater the rate of charitable giving. Compare US vs EU, and then EU to, say, the Middle East or China.
Even if the free market can be proven to reach optimum eventually, this says nothing about the convergence rate. And given that the premisses (such as the technology level) aren't static, we are chasing a moving target, which means convergence rate matters.
True, although the question about convergence needs to be stated in the context of relative rates. In other words... I certainly wouldn't trust mixed-markets to adapt faster.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Net neutrality is NOT FOSS! (Score:3, Insightful)
Net neutrality uses government regulations to enforce policy on a network which is privately owned and leased.
That statement is true, but doesn't tell the whole story. That network was built with government help. It's funny to me that these companies are willing to use anti-libertarian things like eminent domain and then hide behind libertarian principles when it suits them. The minute they use eminent domain their networks cease to be private.
Re:Exploitation is the most prized product (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe if you didn't get your libertarian news/opinion pieces from places that are anti-libertarian, you might realize that most of us are reasonable.
Sadly enough, my first impressions of Libertarianism came not from anti-libertarian sources, but from listening to Libertarians themselves and in the vast majority of cases they were anything but reasonable. It started off nice-sounding -- "less government, more freedom" -- which is why I kept listening, but given enough time they always ended up essentially espousing anarcho-capitalism (even if they didn't call it that, though some did). At which point I can't help but laugh, as I would to anyone saying they were going to guarantee my freedom with "anarcho-" anything, because anarchy lasts exactly long enough for someone strong enough to impose their own rules which will always be in their own favor.
It also didn't help when they started talking about Ayn Rand, since I hadn't realized at the time that she was such an inspiration for certain branches of Libertarianism, but did think that The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were two of the most hateful books I'd ever had the displeasure of reading.
Anyway, since then, I've had discussions with reasonable libertarians, and I realize that my initial impression was in a way a stereotype, but that association has still lingered. Sadly the reasonable libertarians I've known haven't included any of the candidates for office that I've been aware of.
Re:Exploitation is the most prized product (Score:4, Insightful)
More accurately, there are a large number of old Goldwater Conservatives who have stopped identifying themselves as Republicans after the Bush years and are currently lacking another label other than Independents. Generally we're the small federal government, lower federal taxes, pro-individual freedom types who think the religious right can go F-themselves.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:2, Insightful)
However, please remember that a market overseen by the goverment tends irremediably to end up in an oligarchy
Fixed that for you.
Name one case where this happened without the assistance of the government. And by the "assistance" of the government I mean subsidies (railroads, ISPs), physical force (historical: using the government to put down unions), copyrights (RIAA), patents (Intel/AMD) and monopolies directly created by government policies (cell phone companies -- because of how the wireless spectrum is sold).
And don't take this to mean that some of these might be useful, some of them might be. My point is just that the monopoly-creating tendency isn't the free market.
Re:who's freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you feel it is important for the Federal government to certify doctors (or other professions) I suggest amending the Constitution to afford it that power. Otherwise leave it to the state governments or the people. It's very likely that doing so would result in a similar outcome in terms of doctor certification by a state body or an independent organization that exists to perform this function. It's also likely that such an system would not result in any organization that is better or worse that the current system.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not based on freedom and personal choice, it's based on a lack of restrictions. Similar concepts, but there's an important semantic difference: the first implies regulation to make sure that choice and freedom an ensured(and is thusly self-compromising); the second just crosses it's metaphorical fingers and hopes that things stay unrestricted. They don't and can't, of course.
"Good and right" or "ethical" has nothing to do with it, especially since "good and right" are highly subjective terms and certainly when dealing with government or the lack thereof. What's good and right and ethical to you can very easily seem selfish and uncaring and highly unethical to someone else because they're suffering for the lack of regulation. A lack of restrictions on you can, and does, incur restrictions upon others. That's not very ethical (by your definition), is it?
What you're advocating, more or less, is a degree of socialism, except that you don't want to call it that. There must be some kind of regulation to ensure a functioning social contract, otherwise ad-hoc regulation happens as soon as power starts to accumulate, and those ad-hoc structures can very easily be bad and wrong and unethical.
The original point though, is that an unregulated, completely free market has a lifespan that makes mayflies look like Methusela. It can't exist because the accumulation of power, which happens no matter what, negates it's existence. Marxism, at least, doesn't completely self-contradict itself, despite being almost as ignorant of the reality of human society.
Calling it "good and right" or "ethical" is disingenuous.
Re:who's freedom? (Score:2, Insightful)
I find it odd that only a government can guarantee these things. The same government that can't balance a ledger. I simply will never agree with someone that think 600+ people playing politics in washington know what is best for 307,765,999 people by writing a law. Despite your sarcasm, if someone did want to get their brain-ass transplant in your unclean apartment (go clean it you dirty person) then they will do it despite the government.
I am not going to to pretend that the government has magical power to fly around protecting us.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
'the goal' of 'free market' is to let anyone do what they want, and that is actually something that only people with power want as it allows them to ensure they remain the people with power.
What you refer to is not free market, its utopian market where everyone is good to each other and loves bunnies and kitty cats.
That will never exist.
Confusion is the Real prize of the game (Score:3, Insightful)
Political and economic liberalism have emerged as massive public movement(s) during the course of the 18th century. Ever since, the anti-liberals have been hard at work and libertarianism is just one late inventions of the right to confuse minds by turning liberalism into its opposite. To convince yourself of this, just look at any libertarian website: on any issue, the right agenda is advanced and the left one attacked or derided.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you imagine what would happen if other markets went the way of OSS and FSF ideals? You'd get a few finished products and a lot of half-baked, half-finished products. You'll have to supply your own containers when shopping for soup at the market, and provide your botulism test because the kitchen hadn't gotten around to it yet. You go to buy a car, but someone decided to break with convention and try a new brake design. He's delivered the car in a .5 Alpha and makes a small note that the brake fluid/master cylinder/wheel interface isn't ready yet.
Yeah... I'm so glad everything in today's world is all finished products. The version of Windows is final, never needs patches or fixes. Since everything is so nicely tested cars never have recalls for things like spontaneous fires [switchfires.com] or fuel leaking [consumeraffairs.com]. I am so glad when you go shopping you can be 100% confident that the meat you just bought [nowpublic.com] has no harmful gut bacteria since the slaughterhouse would surely not chop open the intestines of the animal while butchering it. The industry does such a good of regulating itself behind closed doors that if we saw how well they operate internally we couldn't possibly find a single way of improving it, because the system that a dozen infallible geniuses think up is a billion times better than what you and I and a billion other people could ever devise.
</sarcasm>
Wake up! THE MAN is as fallible as anybody else. Just because it's open doesn't mean it's unfinished or half-baked.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
So not only will we get a single monopoly per market segment, but eventually some company will manage to get them all and get total control of the entire economy.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you care to name a market of significant size that wasn't regulated to a significant extent by the government? Once you name a few, I'll look at how the oligarchies form in them.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:5, Insightful)
And when all the ISPs "independently" decide to start charging every time you access google? Will you move to another country?
I'm in a similar situation: my ISP has defined some policies that I don't agree with but all the available "alternatives" do exactly the same thing!
What would a libertarian do?
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:5, Insightful)
Since "free market" cannot exist without a government to enforce property rights, or to simply keep the population density required to have an economy specialized enough to qualify as a market without people killing each other, any and all market failures have government involvment, as do market successes.
Actually, it is. The more money you have, the easier it is to make more, since you can expand your business, hire more people, open side stores, etc. This means that free market - indeed, any unregulated economy - is inherently unstable, since success breeds success and any small initial differences are magnified exponentially as time passes. This is true of markets of any scale, up to and including the whole world.
Think about it: why do large companies get more subsidies than small ones? Because they can afford to give more bribes than smaller ones. They have more money, thus wield more power, and consequently can use that power to get more. It's exactly like landed aristocracy, by the virtue of owning land and thus being able to afford a private army, could then use that army to tax the people working that land and get an even bigger army.
It's not the government that's the problem, but rather any large concentration of power. Once a company or a private individual has that, it can bribe the government to bust an union, or it can hire thugs of its own to do it. Either way, it's anyone having that kind of power that's the source of hte problem.
Re:There is a simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
But I'm by no means an anarchist. Anarchy leads to monarchy. I'm for government, I'm against victimless "crime" laws. I'm for regulation; government isn't supposed to protect me from me, it's supposed to protect me from you.
Government shouldn't protect me from dope dealers by outlawing dope, they should protect me from dope dealers by regulating the dope business. And taxing it, BTW.
Re:who's freedom? (Score:4, Insightful)
You greatly overestimate human rationality. Just look at the insanely profitable New Age "movement" and holistic medicine industry, snake oil sells. Imagine if those people could call themselves medical doctors.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
If the incumbent becomes stagnant, there is always the possibility that a major player from a related sector can come in and eat their lunch.
And if they do not then they keep becoming monopolies (in the practical sense this does not require 100% market share), in more and more sectors till they run everything (only unlike communism you do not get a vote to say how they run it)
Black market as an example (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Libertarian that likes free software (Score:3, Insightful)
Free software isn't socialism, it's the new capitalism. It's the small guy capitalism.
I've always thought of it as this. Opposition to free software is the broken window fallacy. We keep paying for the same products time and again for the good of the economy. The concept that we make money building on past accomplishments should be a good thing.
Not a Libertarian...just throwing in my $0.02
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:1, Insightful)
That is Marxist fantasy. True long-term monopolies only exist due to government regulation.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it: why do large companies get more subsidies than small ones?
If your goal is to show that the government is not the problem with the creation of monopolies then using subsidies, which by definition are from the government, isn't really the best place to start.
Re:Par for the course (Score:3, Insightful)
They always end up harping on legalizing hard drugs
OK, look, if you don't believe you should be able to ruin your life any way you want, how can you say you're for liberty? If you want to smoke crack why should I stop you? Now, if you steal from me to buy your dope, that's a different matter. The stealing should be illegal, not the dope.
Re:MOD PARENT UP!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want a non-neutral network, feel free to build your own. That is the libertarian way. The US taxpayers paid for this infrastructure and should have a say in how it is run.
Re:Exploitation is the most prized product (Score:3, Insightful)
What happens if the owner of the place I'm working for decides to support a right-wing party, one I'd never vote for myself? Is that okay? I mean, I can't work in the place without supporting - through my labour - that party, just like I couldn't work in a union shop without supporting a left-wing one.
The only difference I can see is that the union shop ends up paying me less due to the union dues, which may or may not be compensated or even turned into a larger effective wage by union negotiating a better base wage.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Libertarians oppose "net neutrality" because there's nothing neutral about it. It's some group forcing what it thinks is right onto others. If Commcast wants to start charging you more every time you request a page from Google, let them.
>>>
I would support this view *if and only if* Comcast's government-granted exclusive license (monopoly) was revoked, and a free/liberated market restored. Until that happens Comcast needs to be restrained by the government from abusing its monopoly, just the same way the Power and Telephone monopolies are restrained/regulated.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah, it's only regulations that make costs high. You could start an ISP out of pocket if not for those horrible regulations. All you have to do is set up some equipment and then politely ask Comcast if you can use their cable... wait... Okay, you have to lay your own cable, and politely ask everyone in the city if you can dig up their yards to lay a redundant cable line. That will be nice and cheap, and efficient too! Free market at work!
Re:Libertarians calling others a 'radical agenda'? (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, how can you think that a philosophy that is fundamentally pacifist can be in any way similar to an inherently violent ideology like fascism? That's like saying that white is black because it becomes black over time, therefore black is less black than white.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Try This (Score:4, Insightful)
"Try as you might, you'll never separate libertarianism from racism.
Even if a libertarian isn't personally racist, they see things like the civil rights act and the fair housing act (and the associated enforcement costs) as the government sticking it's nose where it doesn't belong, so at the very least a libertarian world view enables racism."
Try as you might, you'll never separate liberalism from socialism.
Even if a liberal isn't personally socialist, they see things like property rights and individual achievement (and the lack of government power thereof) as unfairness, so at the very least a liberal world view enables socialism.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
we got three wireless internet providers blanketing our city
Three overlapping service providers? That's nice. Too bad if the government dropped all of its regulations, you'd be fubar because interference would be through the roof. Oh but right, businesses would just play nice with the spectrum, and never try to deliberately degrade a competitor's service.
You get more of something when you tax it less, you get less of something when you tax it more. This is fifth grade economics.
Maybe you should have stayed in school. Taxes are not the only costs associated with things. There is such a thing as a natural monopoly. I guess those are sixth grade topics.
Re:Libertarian / Laissez Faire / Free Market (Score:2, Insightful)
Markets don't have objectives; people have objectives. A "free market" is simply a market that has the quality or state of being free. How you got from here to there I can not fathom.
"Free" here means nothing more than "unencumbered." A market that is unencumbered is a market in which buyers and sellers are able to exchange the goods and services each posses at any rate, in any quantity, and at any time. Free is simple.
A market, free or not, has no objective. It is not rational. It cares not for maximization or minimization. It does not know of distribution of wealth. It is not right or wrong, and is no respecter of persons, even of their relative freedom or lack thereof. All these are irrelevant to whether or not a market is free.
Participants in a market may be moral or immoral, but a market is neither.
Karma Burning Friday (Score:5, Insightful)
And to ensure the "-1 Flamebait"...
Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand.
libertarianism is the mirror image of communism (Score:3, Insightful)
communism believes human altruism trumps all, selfishness can only result in wrong, and so selfishness must be stamped out. they imagine the future to be an egalitarian community of equally deserving middle class peers, achieved via the state deciding what is best for all. the result is a group of poor people lorded over by an autocrat who is the state, since decision making must reside somewhere if everyone else relinquishes it
libertarianism believes human selfishness trumps all, altruism can only result in wrong, and altruism must be stamped out. they imagine the future to be a balanced federation of equally successful middle class peers, achieved via the natural self-correcting effects of the market. the result is a group of poor people lorded over by a monopolist who takes advantage of the natural imperfections in the market better than anyone else
both libertarianism and communism are equally flawed ideologies destined for the dustbin of history. both had their heydey in the last century and today are really nothing more than philosophical anachronisms no one serious should consider for very long. regard them with the same bemused interest as any other bizarre curiosity of belief from mankind's past
the truth is that human nature is a paradoxical mix of altruistic and selfish impulses. therefore, any valid political philosophy which claims to be able to lead men must reflect this mix as well. any political philosophy which ignores man's essential altruism or ignores man's essential selfishness cannot lead men for very long, we grow disillusioned when we see the fruits of folly
the market fundamentalism of libertarianism or agrarian fundamentalism of communism are, like any other form of fundamentalism, simplistic overstatings of human nature, and always result in tragedy and suffering
Useful Idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
The Heartland Institute uses libertarian concepts, but from its start has been a front for wealthy conservative industrialists(1). As TFA describes the HI's report, it's the kind of libertarianism that is only concerned with limiting the power of the state, and is mute over injustices perpetrated by parties other than the state( [sourcewatch.org]2 [timothyblee.com]).
Mr. Bee is correct to note that although Stallman, et al, are not libertarians, the F/OSS community is in substance a real-life expression of a libertarian ideal. Market competition is a destroyer of marketable value, down to the logical zero. Profit arises from something monopolized, be it an idea, a process, or a thing... like the only gas station for the next 100 miles. F/OSS theoretically zeros out the marketability of software, but unlocks other kinds of value for the consumer.
Getting back to the HI report, Mr. Moglen claims not to like network neutrality based on the language of F/OSS evangelists. The fact is, his paymasters in telecom - in a federal move to make telecom competitive - did compete for a time, until they decided they'd rather enjoy the monopolist's profit by merging, than continue to the nirvana of its creative destruction.
Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score:3, Insightful)
Ways I can keep you out of the market just off the top of my head:
Sell at a loss my product until you go away.
Steal your idea and sell it for less thanks to my huge existing manufacturing infrastructure.
Tell all my partners that working with you will result in millions in lost business.
Spend millions spreading false research that your product is dangerous. It gives you cancer!
Usually the easiest way to keep a competitor from entering the market is to kill you while there's little to no profit in helping the little guy survive.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes the Ludicrous notion of intellectual property. Ludicrous to people who don't profit personally from intellectual property.
All property is intellectual property. What makes an atom so much more significant than a pattern? If I own an ounce of gold should I be able swap it for a crafted gold ornament of equal weight? Why not? They're both just gold!
What you're saying is that inventors shouldn't be compensated for their inventions. Artists shouldn't be compensated for their art. Authors shouldn't be compensated for their books. If you're an author and you want to make money from your story how do you do that without intellectual property? Let's say an agent runs across your story. They tear out the hand crafted binding and run it through a scanner. It's a NY Times best seller. But the author gets nothing. After all, it's just imaginary property, he who prints it and distributes it is the only person who made "Real" property. Maybe they didn't even put your name on it. Why should they, the author has no claim to it, it's just imaginary property.
The only thing that throwing out the ludicrous notion of intellectual property would accomplish is completely cement the power into the hands of the corporations who have the capital and infrastructure to out compete other corporations. The individual would have no ownership. The individual would have no control. This is the "Free market" that most non-interventionists advocate. A world where corporations are free to rob the public blind. I'm sure the CEO of the printing company which does nothing but sell pirated books would be payed handsomely for producing so much real product. I hope the CEO would feel charity for the authors he prints and give them a check out of good will. But that's all anyone who doesn't deal in tangible products would ever get. Charity. Maybe fans of the author would donate on their webpage, like a beggar on the street. Maybe they could sell some merchandise through their webpage, and maybe some people would buy the overpriced 'official' merchandise off the author's webpage instead of all the higher quality, less expensive similar merchandise available at any other store. But who knows.
Because that's what 'free market' is all about. It's about looking out for the freedom to do as you please, regardless of the consequences for anyone else. It's the freedom from government so that corporations of unchecked and unaccountable institutions can use their power and control to enslave and rob the population blind.
Step 1) Lay waste to the competition and establish a monopoly.
Step 2) Impose absurd demands on the workers that they must accept since they have no other choice of employment.
Step 3) Profit.
These aren't paranoid fantasies... this is history.