[liberationtech] Commercialization makes your online rights irrelevant, more thoughts from my talk with @ioerror at #rp12

[Pavol Luptak]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 03:01:21PM +0200, Dmytri Kleiner wrote:
> 
> On 20.05.2012 13:52, Pavol Luptak wrote:
> >Just few notes:
> >
> >1. It's the commercialization (economical profit motivation) that
> >drives
> >technological progress and that's why these "centralized social media
> >monopolies" have so many features, they are so user-friendly and so
> >successful
> >for the masses
> 
> If they received similar financing, p2p and distributed applications

From who? 

> >2. If these "social media monopolies" become really bad for their
> >users, they
> >just move to diaspora / identi.ca or something else.
> >Now this level of "evil" is too low for the most people, so they
> >simply do not
> >care.
> 
> Those alternatives do not have the network size, nor sophistication
> of the social media monopolies, and this is exactly because they
> have no comparable source of financing.

And how do you want to solve it without stealing money from the other people?

> 
> >3. You have no moral right to steal money from taxpayers and use
> >them to
> >regulate business of these social media monopolies, because you
> >think their
> >users deserve a better privacy protection.
> 
> Please read some basic macroeconmics, the government does not spend
> taxpayer's money.
> 
> http://www.dmytri.info/tax-payers-lament/

??? 

Do you know at least one famous and world-know economist who shares your
opinion? 

Some extracts from your article:

> The government does not collect taxes because it needs this money to spend. 
> All money, meaning here the national currency of the country, originally 
> comes from the government. If the government did not spend or lend, there 
> would be no such money in the economy. The government creates money.

Unfortunately yes. Our governments have money-monopolies (thanks to FED or ECB)
what is absolutely bad, because it is an official tool how to steal money from
their citizens (by printing new money and causing inflation).

Imagine the situation that I would have my own currency and force you to use
this currency (so you would use it for buying/selling all services/products).
If I want to steal you, you even don't need to pay me any taxes, just use my
money. Anytime I can print new a new money papers and buy from you any your
services or products (and you MUST to accept my money, because you have no
other options and I am your government). Still you think, it's not stealing?

Theoretically we don't need taxes, because FED/ECB can print as much as money
as it wants (and tax people using inflation). But it would look quite strange
for most people:-) 
And maybe inflation would become hyperinflation... 

> In most countries, the price of commodities like alcohol and tobacco is 
> substantially made up of taxes, yet nobody expects that the sellers of 
> these goods absorb the cost of such taxes in reduced profits, everybody 
> knows they are passed-on in the prices paid.

Of course not, if you increase taxes, people will start to look other ways
to buy cheaper products from cheaper countries (including alcohol and 
tobacco) or smuggling.

The USA is a nice example how big taxes totally kill smart people and 
companies and they just simply leave, see:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/technology/internet/facebook-co-founder-eduardo-saverin-moves-singapore-avoid-us-taxes

And I would do it in the same way if it is possible.

And yes, I am a fan of free banking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking

> By the way, if you live in an apartment building, is it morally
> reprehensible to ask you to contribute in some way in order to live
> there?

It depends on your agreement with the apartment's owner of course.

If it is voluntary and you refuse to contribute, you should bear all 
consequences...

> So far, you have given me no reason to care what you think, to be
> honest, since you are just rehashing long discredited
> "anarchocapitalist" garbage.

I don't like term 'anarchocapitalist', I would prefer 'voluntaryist' in my
case.

I have nothing against any communistic / democratic or other voluntary society 
based on free society.

> 
> Have you read any Benjamin Tucker?
> 
> http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/tucker13.html
> http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/an_or_cap.html
> 
> I'm a big fan of Mutualism and Individualist Anarchism.

I do not believe in this public "property", e.g. because of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_anticommons

I have practical experiences from Czechoslovakia where everything belong 
to everybody with no responsibility.

I believe that it is absolutely natural for humans to have their own 
property rights as they have rights to their bodies.

> However, the best thing about "anarchocapitalism" is that it's
> completely irrelevant, and therefore not worth spending any more
> time debunking than transdimensional lizard people conspiracies.

For me it's probably the most logical and rational system.

> You probably wont really believe me and proceed to write a defense
> of your "anarchocapitalism" which I will happily ignore. I've
> already done my research, and I'm just not interested in any
> ideology that pretends that we are not deeply social.

I have also done my own research and the result was that humans are 
individuals and need individual rights for their properties and bodies.

> We are people, not some sort of disconnected individual exchange
> value calculators. We live for each other, we die for each other, we
> work for each other, and we share with and yes, we even steal from
> each other. We have a right to socially determine economic outcomes.
> More than a right, we have a moral imperative that's much stronger
> than your shallow moral indignation over taxation. If we can't
> collectively decide that we want no poverty, no economic barriers to
> education or health, no business models that cause environmental
> catastrophe, then we can have neither democracy nor freedom.

I have nothing against collective decision if it is purely voluntary. 
I am for all social communistic systems which are built on voluntary basis.

> And yes, this means we also have a moral right to decide that we
> don't want surveillance and control to be the driving requirement of
> our global communications infrastructure, and to organize socially
> and politically towards these ends.

Of course, you have this right. You can use any non-aggressive ways to fight
against this surveillance and control. 
But do not use (our government's printed and enforced monopoly) money of some
other people without their consent. 

Pavol
-- 
_______________________________________________________________
[wilder at trip.sk] [http://trip.sk/wilder/] [talker: ttt.sk 5678]
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