Abolishment of democracy? (was: Re: [ox-en] Re: SpamAssassin and OHA)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:18:29 +0100
Hi Graham and list!
Note: When I'm talking of abolishment I mean abolishment in a
dialectical sense. This is abolishing thesis and anti-thesis in a
synthesis. I suppose there is a better word but I can't recall it.
Last month (30 days ago) Graham Seaman wrote:
a. I have certainly met people in the past who feel that bourgeois
freedoms are so fake and meaningless that abandoning them is no loss at
all. For example, freedom of contract, which is so tilted in favour of
the employer it seems to be no freedom at all ('just sign this paper which
gives the company ownership of all your ideas...'. 'No? So you're choosing
to stay unemployed?').
I'm definitely among these people ;-) . I think bourgeois freedoms
need to be abolished in the sense outlined above.
b. Directly generalizing some features of free software would mean
abolishing some of these freedoms.
You mean in the non-dialectical sense of revoking them? I'd question
how they reappear in the synthesis.
The right to vote, for example - voting
in the context of developing software is pretty meaningless.
More and more I think this has to do with the fact you can always
fork. This unlimitedness making forks possible has ample
implications...
So can this
carry over directly?
Good question.
Is decision by trusted, known, replaceable experts a
reasonable substitute?
Sometimes I think so. Given the tomfools disguised as politicians of
today I often think it would be good to have experts making decisions
- in particularly if they are trusted.
At other times I don't think so. In particular when I think of
decisions with a world-wide impact.
BTW: "Known" is only a prerequisite of "trusted" so I think this can
be dropped. "Replaceable", however, is a contradiction to "known" so I
think they are not (easily) replaceable.
All the constitutions I know of (debian, hipatia,
etc) for organizations related to but not directly producing software in
themselves assume not, and that voting is necessary.
Yeah, well, I think you also need to check what voting is good for.
For instance in the Debian constitution - as far as I read it yet -
voting has a string element of nailing down a consensus process.
But it isn't
immediately obvious that it is....
I agree.
There must be other cases where the
question hasn't even come up yet. What about freedom of trade? In drugs?
In human organs?
What is actually the question here? Could you sort it out?
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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