Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society

[Erica Frank]

   On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 9:44 AM Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss
   <[1]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org> wrote:

     Hi, friends at Libreplanet.
     During a discussion in #fsf, we were quite critical of modern
     society,
     especially on copyright, patents, "intellectual property",
     healthcare
     and Capitalism.  A (possibly sarcastic of modern society) suggestion
     was raised to build islands in the middle of oceans from plastic
     waste
     and run a free society there.

   This has been tried. Multiple times. It flops horribly because (1) the
   people throwing money at it would like to believe that they won't be
   bound by international treaties & local laws and (2) it's invariably
   started by a group that wants to be a master class, and imagine they
   will bring in servant-types at some later date, and that those
   servant-types will be content to live and work under conditions that
   don't give them the protections they have from existing laws.
   Examples:
   2014 [2]https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10
   2016
   [3]https://www.gq.com/story/the-libertarian-utopia-thats-just-a-bunch-o
   f-white-guys-on-a-tiny-island
   2017
   [4]https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-
   libertarian-experiment-america-215313/
   2020 [5]https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-b
   ear-book-review-free-town-project
   2021
   [6]https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voyage-satos
   hi-cryptocurrency-cruise-ship-seassteading
   And the shiny new attempt for 2022: [7]https://cryptoland.is/
   A "free" ocean nation is possible... if you don't need wifi or other
   technology that comes from land; if you don't need to buy food or get
   medical services from land; if you don't need to dock a ship anywhere;
   if you don't intend to export goods or services to any country. If you
   do plan to maintain connections with the mainland, there's a host of
   laws and international treaties that will apply. And most of the "live
   free" movements want that to be "live free and rich," not "find
   somewhere that we can do subsistence farming where no gov't will care
   enough to notice us." You can live free by moving to any number of
   remote, inhospitable locales. In groups, even. But you can't live
   tax-free and still participate in commerce with people who pay taxes.
   (Well, it's possible, but the setup for that isn't "invent a country in
   a spot nobody's claimed"; it's "invent a business that shuffles money
   in so many directions that governments get dizzy trying to find the cup
   with the ball under it.")

     I thought: Why aren't we doing a great job convincing users to
     switch to
     free software as a replacement to the proprietary software they use?
     Some classmates that I tried convincing into using Trisquel
     GNU/Linux
     noted that most modern programs that they use day-to-day only run on
     Android, Apple iOS, Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows,

   The reason people don't switch to Linux is that support for new users
   SUCKS. You'd think that, after 20+ years of Unix-based software,
   there'd be a plethora of "How to Dump Windows And Switch To [version]
   Linux!" websites. There are not. Instead, plenty of Windows users who
   try to switch discover "I have installed this new OS.... and my wifi
   doesn't work." Or their audio doesn't work. Or they try to install WINE
   so they can use the apps they need for work, and it doesn't work. Or
   they try to play games and discover that Steam-for-Linux and
   Steam-via-WINE have two different feature sets, and one of them doesn't
   work for their favorite game. And so on.
   (I have two adult daughters who have switched from Windows to Linux.
   They both hate Windows. Neither has strong software requirements. Both
   occasionally have to wipe their system and reinstall the OS because
   they can't figure out how to fix the odd problems that show up.
   ...Neither of them has work-related content or settings that would be
   destroyed by a reinstall.)
   I am on Windows because I'm a power user of several apps with no Linux
   versions: Acrobat Pro, InDesign, MS Word, FineReader (you've probably
   never heard of it, and that's very reasonable). I'm a regular user of
   other programs with no Linux versions. And seeing the nightmares my
   kids have had with using WINE does not make me happy at the idea of
   switching. (I'm aware that there's LibreOffice and other free software
   that cover most of what Word does. They don't cover everything that
   Word does, and they won't cover the 25% extra time it'll take me to
   find everything for a few months while I get used to them. A big part
   of my job is "Hey here is a document; it's got [list of problems]; fix
   those and get it back to me within an hour before the client meeting."
   I can't do that on unfamiliar software.) I do a lot in PowerPoint, not
   because I like PPT (nobody who has actual editing experience likes
   PPT), but because the company does a lot with PPT. And opening
   word/ppt/excel/etc files in non-MS programs sometimes has weird results
   - changes the hidden formatting features, and so on. So they'd look
   fine to me, and I hand them back, and they discover the fonts have
   changed or the images have moved around.
   Anyway. If you want free software to be more popular, find a way to
   make it easy to switch for people with decent awareness of technology
   and no command-line experience. I can pick up command-line work - when
   I started learning computers, there was nothing else - but there are no
   simple guides for "so now you're using Linux; here's the two-page
   cheatsheet for Ubuntu/Gnome/Mint/whatever."
   You can usually search Google or DDG for "here's my error message; how
   do I fix it?" And the answers are often on StackExchange or similar -
   and they are often hostile and condescending enough that I am never,
   ever going to ask for Linux help for specific problems in public. The
   result is: I'm using proprietary software with an unknown amount of
   data harvesting, that sometimes changes or removes the features I rely
   on - but I'm not being regularly insulted (or threatened) by sexist
   jerks who think I'm an idiot for not having encountered this problem
   before.

     I asked myself:  Why do people choose convenience over freedom?

   The simple, quick answer is "I see you don't have children of your
   own." All of human history has been a matter of giving up some freedoms
   in exchange for convenience. It has always been possible for almost
   anyone to go off alone and survive by scrounging or potentially even
   farming. There are exceptions - some types of slavery, most prisoners,
   etc. But for most of history, most people have been free to pick a
   direction and walk until nobody else is in range. Unsurprisingly, most
   of of them choose to remain in contact with others, which means giving
   up some autonomy for the convenience of a community.
   If you mean, "why do people choose this particular convenience over a
   freedom I believe is readily available" - then you have to get into the
   details. Because a freedom that looks obvious and simple to you may not
   be as apparent - or as easy - to someone else.

      I have a theory that it's a combination of
     social pressure and coorporate brainwashing,

   Humans are social critters. We thrive in communities. All communities
   involve giving up freedoms. There is no brainwashing involved in
   "convince people to go along with the group instead of following their
   every impulse"; that's the socialization that begins in infancy. (The
   end result is: we get communities so that a broken leg doesn't mean
   death, so that children live past the age of two, so that we can eat
   something other than raw fruit in season and meat cooked on sticks over
   a fire. And, y'know, so we can have books and houses and chat with
   people in other countries, but those aren't why we have communities;
   they're just some of the more recent benefits.)
   There are corporations taking advantage of that, and warping our social
   drives for profit, to the long-term detriment of both communities and
   the planet. But the problem isn't "people are prone to accept
   whatever's easiest and go along with the crowd."

     My family has been to the US in 2013.  One of my biggest negative
     impressions was that health care was terrifyingly expensive.

     A ride in the ambulance costs 10 dollars on
     average in Shanghai, but thousands in ths US.  (Note that by "the
     US", I
     am referring to the state I was in, I do hope that there are saner
     ones.)

   There are not; the US medical industry's costs are absolutely shocking
   to most of the rest of the world. An ambulance trip in the US can run
   thousands of dollars even with good insurance; there are no states
   where that's not true. Some states are somewhat better about medical
   costs - or rather, some states regulate who pays for the costs better -
   but the costs are still being set by profit-seeking insurance companies
   rather than having anything to do with the actual cost of services.

     For a government to be able to handle social needs, it must not be
     corruputed.

   [citation needed]
   ...can you name some non-corrupt governments as examples?
   This is important. Listing problems with a government is easy. If the
   solution were simple, we wouldn't have these problems. Even with as
   much as the current people in power will fight to maintain that - if
   there were a simple solution that resulted in better living for
   everyone, that didn't result in thousands of small-to-medium disasters
   (at a minimum) during a transition phase, we'd have put it into place.
   That doesn't mean I think improvement is impossible, just that it's not
   a matter of "swap this government system for that other one, and things
   will be better immediately and much better in the long term."
   For example: Copyright, trademark, and patent laws are currently
   horrible, and causing a lot of damage. However, just removing them
   wouldn't help - that'd just mean that mega-corporations could use
   anyone's work to make profit for themselves without paying for it. It'd
   mean a return to private patronage and extensive contracts involved
   before you can read a book or watch a movie.... and ordinary citizens
   would not be the ones with the advantage in that situation. (...What I
   want is an end to the Berne convention, copyright dropped to about
   25-30 years automatic, and requiring registration & growing fees to
   extend it. $100 US for the next 10 years, in the US - a nominal fee
   that covers registration costs. $1000 for 10 years past that: you have
   to still be making money to bother. $10,000 for every ten years past
   that - if Disney wants to keep Snow White in its control, it can do so,
   but they have to pay the public to keep the monopoly. And that's per
   work, not per franchise: Every episode of Star Trek would need to be
   registered and extended.)

     Theories such as the separation of powers exist, but in
     contemperory times, implementations such as the US have
     sometimes-corrupt but almost always ineffective governments.

   On the one hand: yes, I get that.
   On the other: cars do not regularly run people over on the sidewalk in
   my neighborhood. The wiring in my house does not cause fires. The food
   I buy at local restaurants does not poison me. My neighbors do not burn
   tires for heat in the winter. The water in my kitchen sink is safe to
   drink. And for all the gun violence in my local area, nobody sits on
   their front porch and does target practice on other human beings. My
   family's doctors do not demand intimate favors in exchange for health
   care services.
   My government has a lot of flaws, but it also has successfully provided
   enough safety regulations that I can be comfortable enough to criticize
   it.
   I don't mean, "we should just celebrate the good that governments have
   done." I mean that saying "it's horribly corrupt; we should throw it
   out" needs to start with an awareness of the thousands of small
   benefits that laws have brought. Any anarchist/libertarian "free
   community" needs to first decide, "can you burn waste in your backyard?
   If so, what kinds; if not, who's going to enforce that rule?" ...Will
   you have private land ownership, and if so, can you cut down all the
   trees on "your" land? Can you throw waste into "your" river?
   ...Can you have a business selling heroin to teenagers? How about
   alcohol? Tobacco? Caffeine?
   What toxins are acceptable to sell to anyone, which are restricted, and
   which are forbidden? Who decides, and who enforces those rules?
   I am firmly in favor of free software. I would like to see governments
   be required to use free, open-source software for government purposes -
   to not be beholden to any business or company for essential government
   functions. (Or even optional government functions.) But I am aware that
   the visible government--currently-elected legislators--is a small
   portion of a complex system, and that there is no possible simple,
   sweeping reform that will fix the current batch of problems (and there
   are so, so many problems) without bringing in a host of others. And I
   am not so sanguine as to trust the people who say "eh, we'll deal with
   those when they come up."

   if you want to build a government that's free-and-equal, start by
   talking to single mothers with kids under 5 years old, and asking what
   they need from a government. Design a system that works for them, and
   you'll have a foundation that can be extended to support any size of
   community.
   (Sorry this has gotten rather far from "free software" discussion. I
   think it does all tie together - one of the reasons free software has
   problems catching on, is corporate influence over governments, so the
   very structure of government is part of the discussions. But it does
   wind up getting pretty far from "why can't schools just use Linux-based
   laptops?")

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References

   1. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
   2. https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10
   3. 
https://www.gq.com/story/the-libertarian-utopia-thats-just-a-bunch-of-white-guys-on-a-tiny-island
   4. 
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-libertarian-experiment-america-215313/
   5. 
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
   6. 
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voyage-satoshi-cryptocurrency-cruise-ship-seassteading
   7. https://cryptoland.is/
   8. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
   9. https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss