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

[vidak]

On 2022-01-11 01:02, Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss 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 is obviously infeasible, but it
> reinforced my thoughts that free software isn't enough.  With people
> constantly in poverty, healthcare being so expensive in countries such
> as the United States, companies and individuals focusing on profit
> rather than genuine good for society, etc., free software is a step to
> bring us closer to good-old freedom, but with a society that hasn't
> woken up from the endless advertising (brainwashing) of cooprporations
> and governments, we'll almost inevitably be forced to use nonfree
> software, and have our right to freedom violated in countless other
> ways.
> 
> 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, and these
> themselves are nonfree software that they can't escape using (For
> example, school here in China requires the use of WeChat and Tencent
> Meetings to have online classes, and does not have a way to let me
> dial-in by phone, despite my efforts explaining the Constitution and my
> rights to deny a contract I disagree with. [1]  They even went as far as
> saying "We don't care what the Constitution says, you play by our
> rules", which was a surprise to me.).  I reconsidered the situation,
> explained to them what freedom is in this context, and linked them to a
> comprimise, Deepin Linux, a (GNU/)Linux distribution targeted at new
> Chinese users who need WeChat, Tencent Meetings and all that in the
> application center.  This was a comprimise, but this is the best I could
> do given their situation.  Personally I use virtual machines that
> reset to snapshots every boot to run these programs, sometimes even run
> a GNU/Linux distribution inside the virtual machine and use Wine from
> there.  They aren't technically skilled and couldn't handle this.
> Some sources state that US courts require the use of Zoom, which is
> frustrating to think about.
> 
> I asked myself:  Why do people choose convenience over freedom?  This is
> still a mystery to me, as this one of the problems in the to-solve list
> of the upcoming project.   I have a theory that it's a combination of
> social pressure and coorporate brainwashing, as companies are taking
> advantage of human psycology, creating an information cocoon of
> "convenience is the most important thing in your life", pushing products
> to users with social engineering in order to profit from sales or the
> information of their users.  They do everything for profit; they even
> sign contracts with schools to push their products to students, often
> with the students unable to reject.  In this case, how the school and
> government handles this situation is a good example of short-term
> thinking (Or, it might be not caring about their students, I hope it's
> the first, but my conversation with school makes me afraid it's the
> latter.)
> 
> My family has been to the US in 2013.  One of my biggest negative
> impressions was that health care was terrifyingly expensive.  A simple
> X-ray, a two dollar checkup in most hospitals in Shanghai, China costs
> hundreds of dollars in the US (I do not remember which state or region
> it was, I was just 5 years old then.  What I do remember is that we had
> some kind of medicaid; even then, the prices are in hundreds).  A 
> standard CT scan, around 20--35 dollars in Shanghai, costs hundreds or
> even thousands of dollars.  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.)
> Apparantly this is caused by the US not having a good system of
> medicaid, which I hope gets better implemented with Obamacare, but that
> seems to be just a wish.  This leads me to the point that governments
> are responsible for their citizens in exchange for the citizens giving
> up certain liberties (note that liberty isn't freedom exactly),
> including keeping citizens healthy---it is impossible to have a
> prosperous planet with bad healthcare.  (Don't get me wrong, I have more
> positive impressions in the US :P)
> 
> For a government to be able to handle social needs, it must not be
> corruputed.  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.  The Senate
> fillibuster is a important reason, but not the culprit.  The culprit is
> the inherent eager to compete with other political parties and to gain a
> political advantage, rather than coorporating, working together, and
> actually managing the country with decent manners.
> 
> Humanity's system of managing society progressed from the rule of
> monarchs to the rule of law.  But laws can be unclear and
> misinterpreted.  The recent development of mathematics and computer
> science may as well be utilized to create a system of society and
> government, which algorithmicly distributes power in an explicit manner
> (Maybe with something like monads, I haven't got into the mathematical
> part yet.)
> 
> Godel Incompleteness tells us that we can never make a system of
> mathematics that gets understood the same way everywhere; math is also
> an evolving field (albeit very slowly).  If this (currently nil) system
> is to be ever used anywhere (may be the island), we'll definitely find a
> lot of fissues.  In such a system we also have the burden of educating
> people in abstract algebra, which is relatively easy compared to
> developing the system itself.  My intuition tells me that Group Theory
> will come in handy, but that's just intuition.
> 
> Currently, I host this project at [2].  I've only recently gotten into
> Group Theory and abstract algebra, it may take time for us all to come
> up with ideas.  But it's worth trying.
> 
> References
> ==========
> 
> [1] 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2021-10/msg00011.html
>     My previous memo on the use of software in education, COVID-19 and
>     the courts.
> 
>     Ironically, I was still using GitHub at the time.  I recently
>     deprecated all of my GitHub in a notice, and moved all of my current
>     projects to git.andrewyu.org and project.andrewyu.org.  The avenir
>     repository is moving there some time, after I re-write the website
>     with plain HTML---I don't see a reason to use a static site
>     generator anymore.  This GitHub link is not provided here.
> 
> [2] https://project.andrewyu.org/libresociety
>     A "checked out" version of the repository.  The PDFs are of primary
>     interest.
> 
>     git://git.andrewyu.org/libresociety
>     The repository itself.  SSH protocol version also exist, described
>     in the PDF itself.
> 
>     https://notabug.org/andrewyu/libresociety
>     A mirror of the above repository.  Links Out
> =========
> 
> [a] https://stallman.org/there-ought-to-be-a-law.html
>     A collection of bills/laws "proposed" or agreed upon by Richard
>     Stallman, mostly in support for a freer society, a less
>     corrupt/corruptable government, public benefit, etc.  I don't agree
>     with all of them, but many of these will be taken into account in
>     this project.
> 
> Some of the thoughts I had during writing this memo will appear in the
> next commit of the project.
> 
> This memo probably contains spelling errors and odd context-hopping.
> When sitting down in front of my computer on the actual book, I'll be
> more careful, and have a notebook and a pencil in front of me to plot
> relation maps.  Please forgive me, a 13-year-old with an undeveloped
> brain from a non English-native country.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Andrew Yu <andrew@andrewyu.org>
> 
> :P
> 
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Andrew,

Your email is warmly welcomed. I have had exactly the same thoughts
recently.

It is interesting to me because, and I have no shame in admitting this,
I am an anarchist. I see Free Software as a way to resist the State and
try and dissolve it completely.

I would highly recommend you go back to them and show them GNU Guix?
Maybe the point is moot now. Guix is _insanely_ advanced, and that's the
angle you could take to them--the perfect package manager has finally
been built. To my mind, we've now perfectly solved the problem.

The way I look at the issue, though, is that the problem is with Statist
society in general. Hierarchical societies are not natural for humans,
so I maintain. I like GNU for its American sort of approach to this. I
don't share a lot of American culture, but GNU reminds me of Henry David
Thoreau's famous epithet: "the best government is that which governs
least of all, that is to say: not at all".

I come from an anarcho-communist approach. Perhaps we should have a
discussion about attracting attention to the radical elements of GNU--we
could convince people to join on that basis?

Anyway, I have gone on far too long.

Awesome to read your email (:

~vidak

https://zoinks.one/vidak